First Pixar... failure?

Rating: 6/10 (18 June 2006)

Pixar finally made a not-so-good movie. OK, it was good.. sometimes it was actually pretty good.. but most of the time it was just OK... and there were moments where it was, mmmh, how to put it, mmmh, well, almost bad. If there is 1 sin that I cannot forgive in movies, is Boredom. For me, a movie can have bad acting, bad effects, bad music, bad direction... but if it has a bad screenplay, it better NOT be because it's BORING. And Cars, unfortunately, it has a small dose of that. The movie runs for about 2 hours, and there were many times when I caught myself thinking things that had nothing to do with the movie (did I left my PC turned on when I left home?)... the story was simply NOT engrossing enough. You may say that maybe I wasn't in the mood for an animated film, but you would be wrong. I was in the mood. Besides, the best judges in the theatre could corroborate my words: All around me, kids were starting to lose any interest in the movie by the second half of it. Even my kids where apparently more excited to play with their Cars action figures than watching the "real thing" on the screen. But enough with the bad... wait, I'm not done. The movie seems to be directed to... I don't know who, but not to the people who liked the other Pixar films. I mean, now I know what my girlfriend felt when I made here watch with me films like "Any Given Sunday". I felt lost as to why those Cars were making such a big deal of a race. Things like having a "cameo" of this driver guy Schumacher (totally sic) flew over me until after like 10 seconds when my brain woke up and look for his name in the file cabinet for "unnecessary general culture/pseudo-sports" (btw, he's this big-shot driver, kinda like the Michael Jordan of racing, I guess). Then, if you'd know me, you would know that I'm a guy with a very, VERY good sense of suspension of disbelief. Throw me all the wizards, unicorns, aliens, ghosts, superheroes, valiant reporters, gooey masses, talking animals, living toys, God, the Devil, whatever! I will hold my brain "on hold" and believe it all for the duration of the movie, so I can enjoy it, you know. But here, I just couldn't do it. I've heard the expression "leave your brain at the entrance" many times, but this is the first time that I've actually wish I could do it. How in the HELL can we believe in a world where EVERYTHING is cars-related! As hard as I tried, I couldn't stop from thinking that the damn machines do NOT have hands! There's no way they can "create" anything, let alone something as sophisticated as, well, human-like lifestyles! I now realized that in every movie there's always something/someone with hands. This idea, a world populated with cars, may work in shows like Thomas The Tank, or maybe Bob The Builder (but there Bob has hands), BUT these shows are segments of 20 minutes tops, and they are idea-based on some moral argument directed at 2, 3 or 4 years old kids! They're like a naptime story that you usually don't have to explain because the point of the story is the idea of "sharing", or "be nice to your siblings", or some other brainwashing message to have better kids. Here, in a movie that's supposed to be fun for little kids, as well as for adults, or just kids that are potty-trained, well, it just didn't worked. The good things are what make Pixar probably the best animation company out there. The graphics were excellent as expected. The highlight would be the short animation "One Man Band". Totally hilarious with a lot of emotions mixed in its scarce 5 or so minutes. Probably my second favourite next to "Yak-Yak Attack". I would say that the short film made it worth going to watch Cars, but I still wondered why didn't I left my wife with the kids and went to watch "Nacho Libre" instead. OK, I gotta stop myself. I started writing this saying that the movie is OK, but the more I write about it, the more I'm actually hating it. That wasn't supposed to happen. I know that you will see for yourself if this movie sucks or not, I just hope that you have a better control of your brain that I do, and that your day is REALLY relaxed, so you can stand the boredom of s stroll thru Route 66.