Cars crashed

Rating: 2/10 (7 April 2020)

Do I even bother? I liked this as a kid. Why? I have absolutely no idea.
In Cars 2, Lightening McQueen takes to the world stage and races against global racers. He struggles to keep up with the best of the best. However, while this is all going on, somehow Mater falls into being a spy. There's like a conspiracy and espionage and a whole pile of strange dealings.
The issues with this movie can be broken down as four things. Firstly, they introduce a really mediocre set of characters that fails in comparison to the set of characters from Cars 1. There's a reason none of them feature in Cars 3. They don't have personalities and are barely more than just thoughts.
Secondly, the plot doesn't really go anywhere. There are so many changes in direction it feels stationary. The plot twists feel like they were thrown in last minute. Who came up with this and thought it was a good idea? Like I sat there in such a confusion. I, an adult, couldn't work out where it was going at all. One of the best parts of spy movies is guessing what is going to happen. But you can't even do that, because the information required isn't revealed until forty seconds before it is revealed. Frustrating is an understatement.
Thirdly. I just can't with the soundtrack. The soundtrack of Cars was brilliant. The soundtrack of Cars 2 is comparatively nothing. I didn't feel like it had really anything to do with the actual movie. And it's not the songs chosen are bad, they aren't. It's just they don't feel like they were thought out and placed with the same intention of Cars. I read up about Cars and they picked Chuck Berry song that his record company didn't even know existed. That same level of thought was not put in for Cars 2.
Finally, I have a theory. I think Pixar wanted to make a spy movie. And they realised that it would be hard to create spy characters that kids could empathise with and tell the entire story they had planned. So they did something I have never seen Pixar do before. They didn't even try. They just bent tried and tested characters to a story they like and rolled with it. I am sorry but for me that is not good enough.
I don't know if I have ever been so disappointed. Really not worth watching.