What happened??

Rating: 6/10 (25 June 2011)

I am a huge fan of Cars. One of my all-time favorite films. Great storyline and overall just a fun movie to watch. There is an old cliché about sequels not being as good as the original and this movie lives up to that cliché.
I had heard about the story involving espionage and spies and all that but I had no idea that all of this overshadows much of what the first movie was about. Racing. There are so few racing scenes in the movie and the ones that are there are unfortunately overshadowed by thugs and gangs who have a master plan to sabotage the World Grand Prix. In fact I thought that there were some scenes that were a bit much in many cases involving character death. Death in G-Rated movie!? Come on Disney! This isn't 007, its Cars! I think they got far too carried away with the whole Spy Storyline and tried to turn it into a Jason Bourne or James Bond when it should have been Cars.
In addition to the spy story being a bit much, there are just a few scenes that I was a bit uncomfortable with. For example at the beginning of the movie Lightning yells at Mater and basically tells him to get lost. I'm sorry but that was just terrible. In fact the whole movie revolves around Mater basically being an idiot. Again I was a bit disappointed with all of that.
This sequel also seems to shun some of the Radiator Springs characters. Sally, Sarge, Fillmore, Flo, Ramone, etc. might as well have not been in the movie at all. They had such few lines, I thought some scenes had been cut out of the film for time purposes. And just like the first Cars movie there are some professional racing drivers in this movie. Jeff Gordon, Lewis Hamilton, Darrell Waltrip and David Hobbs are great but again not nearly enough lines for any of them. This, I guess, goes back to the lack of racing in this film.
This film does provide laughs and entertainment like the original but I'm sorry as a Race Fan and as a fan of the original Cars I was deeply disappointed.