Not Just a Good Story

Rating: 10/10 (14 June 2006)

We've all come to expect humane, heartwarming (how to say that without sounding smarmy?), positive story lines out of Lasseter & Co. No exception here. But the real star of "Cars" for me was a vanished America of two-lane blacktop, small towns, similar but unique roadside businesses, and the sense that something REALLY exotic lay out there in the blue haze just before the horizon. As a city kid growing up on the southern edge of the Great Plains in the '50s, trips to visit relatives in towns 100 or 200 miles away were odysseys. And each small town in between was as real (and as different from all the others) as Rome or Xanadu. So, "Cars" exhibits another of my favorite Pixar traits: obsessive attention to and faithful respect for details that are almost subliminal (shop signs, can labels, etc.) but validate each frame and inevitably add a layer of pure enjoyment to the film. And the landscape just outside Radiator Springs: the "Chrysler Airflow" buttes, the "Buried Cadillac" outcroppings, the Radiator Cap mesa ... Well, that just confirms my childhood conviction that some really wonderful sights were to be seen out there in the blue haze.