Cars 2 (Also Blu-ray) (Three and a Half Stars)

U. S.: John Lasseter (co-director Brad Lewis), 2011 (Walt Disney)

Cars 2 is another Pixar feature cartoon for kids, adults, old people and everyone in between — especially if they have a crush on post-‘50s car culture. I don’t, but I could feel the curious, obsessive auto-loving fever pouring out of the movie as I watched it  It was fun and fast and hot .

It’s a sequel, of course, to the 2006 feature Cars. The new one is directed (with Brad Lewis) by Pixar head honcho and avowed car lover John Lasseter, who also directed the first, and it continues the earlier film‘s story of a world populated and run by talking cars (no humans anywhere) and of a flashy, egotistical flame-red racing car named Lightning McQueen (voice by Owen Wilson, allusion care of movie star/racer Steve McQueen). McQueen gets trapped in a Southwestern town called Radiator Springs, bonds with the residents and a local good ol’ boy tow truck, named Tow Mater (voiced by Larry the Cable Guy a.k.a. Daniel Whitney) and learns, not for the first time in a big Hollywood movie, that just plain folks (excuse me, just plain jalopies) are the very best kind.

Like most sequels, this one tries to be bigger  — and succeeds. Instead of sticking to “be-it-ever-so-humble” little Radiator Springs, McQueen and Mater have taken off for a grand championship Grand Prix auto race competition held all over the world, in Tokyo, Paris, the fictitious Riviera-like Porto Corsa Italy, and in London.

Among their new playmates are Finn McMissile (Michael Caine, who gives a perfect performance as a secret agent in the body of an Aston Martin, and Holley Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer), another spy with a classy foreign chassis. Running the race is car mogul and alternative fuel innovator (something called Allinol) Sir Miles Axelrod (Eddie Izzard). Their new rival is John Turturro as the Italian car stallion Francesco, a prima donna who is for Formula One racing what Turturro‘s narcissistic player was for bowling in The Big Lebowski. Their nemesis, seemingly, is mad auto scientist Dr. Z (Thomas Kretschmann, the German soldier who brought Adrien Brody the sandwich in The Pianist).

There are plenty of other characters, old and new — including a sportscaster named Brent Mustangburger, voiced by Brent Musburger. But the spotlight is on McQueen, and, even more this time, on Tow Mater, who comes on too strong and makes an ass of himself in the first part of the movie (even though Holley and McMissile mistake him for another secret agent, cleverly disguised as an ass), and then tries to redeem himself in the second part. The unlikely camaraderie between hotshot McQueen and repair doofus Mater is the emotional engine of Cars 2, and how much you like it may really depend on how much you like Mater.

Some don’t. But I was okay with him, and okay with the movie too.

Actually, I didn’t see the first Cars — strange because I usually don’t miss a Pixar, and Cars was also one of Paul Newman‘s last movies. But I had such a good time at Cars 2, and I was so pleased and entertained by its amazingly detailed imaginary auto-world, its cheerful satire of pop as well as car culture and its blizzard of jokes and allusions — that I was a bit mystified to zip my way through the reviews of the show and discover how many critics consider Cars 2 a stinker and Pixar’s nadir.

I was also surprised at how many people were convinced that everything that’s usually good about Pixar shows (the wit, the funny heartfelt characters, the rich and sumptuous animated detail) is somehow all missing here: that Cars 2 is too frenetic, too fast, too loud.  And that the main culprit of the whole fiasco may be one of the actors, Larry the Cable Guy, a shameless cornpone comedian with a Southern-fried accent who plays, as mentioned, McQueen’s rustic fix-it-guy and sidekick.

Mater, as played by Mr. Cable Guy — as the New York Times should have called him and as the New York Post did call him — has been torched.

It is my happy duty to report however, that Larry, or Whitney or Mr. Guy (let’s just call Cable Guy) did not in fact ruin Cars 2, nor, I think, was the movie ruined. I found him occasionally annoying and one-note too.  The problem with Mater isn’t that the performance doesn’t work, because it will probably work fine for kids. The problem is that the truck has now become as much a lead character than Lightning, and so much more is demanded of him, including some heavy emotion and sentiment that may not be his forte.

Cable Guy and Cars are probably both being penalized a bit because they come at the end of a remarkable string of Pixar movies where everything seemed to fall just right for Lasseter and his studio. It isn’t a work of genius, as a lot of us feel Up and Wall-E were.

Maybe they also identify Cable Guy as a red state rube, who represents the kind of suckered audience that believes all the nonsense commentary Fox News churns out — and maybe in a way the character is meant to stand in for Small Town America. But I grew up in a Republican small town with a population barely over a thousand, and it was full of nice people whom I still like — even if I disagree with the way they view the world and with the way they vote in political elections. I think Lasseter, with the two Cars cartoons, is trying to speak to those kinds of people, and to as many kinds of people as he can, and I’m glad he is.

So saying that this Cars 2 is the worst Pixar movie (as many have), though it may even be true (I don’t think so), may be no more damaging than tryong to name Beethoven‘s worst symphony or Shakespeare‘s worst play or Balzac’s worst novel or Brueghel‘s worst painting or The Beatles’ worst album or Dr. Seuss‘s worst children‘s book.

And no, I am not comparing John Lasseter or Pixar to Shakespeare, Beethoven, Balzac, Breughel or the Beatles. (Dr. Seuss, maybe, or, even better, the Walt Disney studio in its ‘30s-’40s prime.) I’m simply trying to make a point about expectations.

Imagine a different actor in the role of Tow Mater — with the character’s mixture of bravado and humility, naiveté and expertise, savviness and down-hominess. Imagine say, the late Slim Pickens, who played the cowboy-hatted nuker Major Kong in Dr. Strangelove, but who also memorably died by the water in Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid while Bob Dylan sang “Knockin’ on Heaven‘s Door.” An actor like Pickens (who began his career as a rodeo clown) could have probably gotten more out of the role than Cable Guy did this time, but who knows? The two things you can say for sure about Larry the Cable Guy is that he knows how to tell a joke, but that he should vary his delivery more.

But try to imagine a better-visualized, better-shot, better animated and better-filmed Cars 2 and you’re pushing a little, ignoring what‘s on the screen. The new Pixar is a good movie for children and for adults and for old people, and it definitely shouldn’t be held against this picture that it will sell a lot of  DVDs and action toys. Somebody has to. Better somebody like Lasseter and his team, and a company like Pixar.

Extras On DVD and 2 Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo: Short cartoons “Hawaiian Vacation” and “Tow Mater”; Director commentary.

Extras On 5 Disc DVD/Blu/Blu 3D/Digital Combo: All the above features, plus Featurettes, Documentaries, Deleted scenes, Interactive map, Set explorations.

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