Pixar's "Transformers" Movie

Rating: 7/10 (28 June 2011)

One prominent notion stood out in my mind after watching "Cars 2" - it was the Energizer Bunny on speed, steroids, and any other drug that gives you superhuman endurance. From the opening shot where a British spy operative is communicating oil rig coordinates to suave James Bondesque agent Finn McMissile (voice of the ubiquitous Michael Caine) to the last shot in Radiator Springs where Gomer Pylesque tow truck Mater is hailed as a hero, "Cars 2" hits the ground running (or rather, racing) and almost never stops. Cars zipping around, racing, diving, skydiving, flying, the movie is seemingly an adrenaline junkie's dream. It was exciting, up to a point, then it eventually became too noisy and tiresome - like, some would say, a Transformers movie.
(PLOT SYNOPSIS: on a dare from the boastful Italian Formula One (I guess) race car Francesco Bernoulli (sp?) (John Turturro), superstar racer Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) challenges him to three races in Tokyo, Paris, and London. This secondary plot is just a pretext for McQueen to bring his "goofy goober" buddy and mechanic Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) along just so Mater can unwittingly blunder into a Bondian "Big Oil vs. Alternative Fuel" spy caper orchestrated by McMissile and his capable young assistant Holly Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer).)
The races and the spy caper both move at Road Runner speed, sometimes parallel, sometimes intersecting where a mysterious villain is eliminating race car participants with an electromagnetic field in a plot to blame their crashes on the alternative ethanol they must use and bolster Big Oil. Yes, I know, it's confusing. Besides the incessant action, you also get meticulously rendered depictions of all three cities and bright, splashy colors (if nothing else, "Cars 2" is visually enthralling). You also get a depiction of what the world would be like if sentient cars, buses, helicopters, and ships ran it (Example: Cars must remove their wheels to go through airport security). There's a lot to process in the movie. Maybe too much.
Again, I call "Cars 2" Pixar's Transformer's movie because it is noisy, busy, stuffed with colorful characters, locations, weapons, and hardware, and sometimes needlessly complex and hard to follow. In spite of all the action andviolence (which should have received a PG rating, at least),occasionally I found my attention drifting. When Mater eventually deduces that Axelrod (the alternative fuel mogul) and not the German mastermind (Professor Z) is responsible for the race car sabotages, and explains his reasoning, it seemed half-baked and vague. Some Scooby-Doo mysteries have more coherent explanations. If adults could get confused by all this, I would imagine that young children watching "Cars 2" would get bored and tune out completely.
So, did I like the movie? Generally, yes. "Cars 2" does maintain Pixar's record for producing ambitious, intelligent movies with important morals (in this case, stay true to yourself and never underestimate anyone, even a country bumpkin). However, the frenetic action and labyrinthine Bond plot unfortunately weigh it down. Nevertheless, there is more good stuff than bad stuff to make "Cars 2" a respectable, if not exceptional, addition to Pixar's canon.
P.S.: Actually, it would have been kind of cool to have one of the vehicles be a "Transformers"-type robot!