Pixar's Weakest Film To Date!

Rating: Null/10 (14 April 2015)

From its debut in 1995 to its most successful film in 2010, Pixar Animation Studios released 11 feature-length films, almost all of which went on to garner them acclaim, love & respect from critics n viewers around the world, completely reinvented the animation industry in the process, and also turned this animation powerhouse into one of world cinema's finest.
But everything that has a beginning has an end & there's always a first time for all things. And Cars 2 marks something of a first for Pixar; it's their first critical failure which ultimately marks the end of the winning streak the studio had kept alive since its inception. However, what's even more disappointing is that they actually decided to make a sequel to Cars!
Cars 2 follows the story of race car Lightning McQueen & tow truck Mater who together travel to Japan & Europe to take part in the World Grand Prix, arranged by a former oil tycoon to promote his biofuel. But when Mater inadvertently costs McQueen his first race & is asked to leave by him, he ends up finding himself caught in an international espionage.
Directed by John Lasseter, Cars 2 takes everything that was wrong with its predecessor & turns it even worse. I don't really know if Disney pushed Pixar for this sequel because of the billions of dollars it earned through Cars' merchandising or if Lasseter truly wanted to return to the picture that barely managed to keep its streak alive. Either way, it definitely isn't Pixar-level cinema.
The plot adapts the same clichéd international espionage we're seen many times before & this is coming from the studio that always brought something new to the table. The runtime is much longer than it needs to be, characters in this franchise were never interesting but now, they're annoying too. Its timid attempts at humour falls apart on most occasions. But its computer animation does carry the Pixar trademark.
On an overall scale, Cars 2 is an unnecessary sequel that shouldn't have existed in the first place. It might be the best one can come up with when having Mater as the lead character but when the first film already warned that people are not interested in these characters, then making a second chapter was absolutely pointless. All in all, after continuously raising the bar during their rise to the top, Pixar at last comes crashing down with Cars 2 & the fall has been so traumatic that it's yet to fully recover from it.