Heartfelt and sincere - my favorite Pixar film

Rating: 10/10 (28 June 2011)

It's odd to think my favorite Pixar film is the one everyone hates or finds inferior to every other film by them. Many people will not understand why I love this film so much, but I'm sure every person has my same love for a film not many people enjoy either. It is a very personal thing, but I loved Cars. It is as good as the first Toy Story movie.
Pixar pumps so much life into their films, and they seem to come out so quickly. Cars came out about a year after The Incredibles, and at that time I assume people expected saw Cars has an awkwardly made film. They're cars. They talk and they have heartfelt conversations. I think maybe talking toys, monsters, bugs, and a superhero family were a bit more understandable.
The plot is that Lightning McQueen (Voiced by Owen Wilson), a race car, just tied with Chick Hicks (Keaton) in their latest race. McQueen's pit crew is now traveling to Los Angeles for the tie-breaker race, as well as McQueen, until the truck carrying McQueen falls asleep and McQueen falls out the back.
McQueen lands in a near desolate town called Radiator Springs. It's an old fashioned town where all the cars know each other, they all knew their customers, and they were all active workers at one point. Ramone (Marin) runs the body shop, Flo (Lewis) runs a diner, Mater (Cable Guy) runs the tow-truck business, Sally (Hunt) runs a motel, Luigi (Shalhoub) and Guido (Quaroni) run an auto repair shop, and Fillmore (Carlin) runs an oil shop. The town is run by a grumpy old race car named Doc Hudson (Newman) who is hiding a secret himself.
The tow-truck Mater tries to become friends with a reluctant McQueen who just sees everybody as losers and himself as a winner. The film teaches a lesson in friendship and staying close to the people you love. The big moral; winning isn't everything.
Cars comes equipped with a "back in the day" style that works in its favor. In the fifties and sixties, like Sally said "Cars didn't drive on it (the old highway) to make good time. They drove on it to have a good time." Now that a highway has been constructed so that it runs right past Radiator Springs, it doesn't get very many, if any, customers and is almost running to the end of its lifespan.
The soundtrack for the film spits two memorable tracks that flow perfectly with the film. Rascal Flats covers Life is a Highway, once sung by Tom Cochrane, and adds a very zesty and fast paced quality to the song. It's exciting and very fitting to a film like this. Cars also features the tear-jerker by James Taylor, Our Town. While playing it, it shows flashbacks when Radiator Springs' business was better than ever and very profitable.
I have a certain love-affair with this movie I can't explain too well. It's a campy and fun movie with a lot of positive, and sad, qualities. The characters, while cars, manage to enter your heart and never leave. And as always, Pixar does exceptionally well when it comes to animation and scenery. It can almost bring back such memories when you were seven years old, and your cars had a mind of their own. You'd race them around using your hands in your bedroom using your own personal sound effect system - your mouth. I'm not accusing you of doing it, I did it too. Cars revives those memories.
Voiced by: Owen Wilson, Larry the Cable Guy, Paul Newman, Bonnie Hunt, Tony Shalhoub, John Ratzenberger, George Carlin, Jenifer Lewis, Cheech Marin, Richard Petty, Joe Ranft, and Michael Keaton. Directed by: John Lasseter and Joe Ranft.