Lasseter talks to baby boomers through the dashboard speaker of my 64 Valiant

Rating: 9/10 (21 June 2006)

Cars is the best animated movie I've seen since "The Lion King"  maybe better.
Definitely cooler.
We saw the trailer last winter, but my only point of reference was other talking machinery cartoons -- "The Brave Little Toaster", etc..and that annoying PBS train cartoon. I didn't expect that much.
Then I heard John Lasseter (the director) on NPR. He was born in 1957, and I realized that his POV growing up in a car society was similar to mine. Drive ins and car hops are cliché, but he spoke about family drives and long trips on pre-interstate roads -- it struck a chord. I realized this was going to be a great movie.
Cars blew us away, from the opening to past the credits (you gotta stay and watch). The story is good (B+), the characters are great (A) and the visuals are unbelievable (A++). But the soul of the movie makes it different.
I remember taking route 19 up to Lake Erie before there was an I-79, and taking 301 to Carolina Beach before I-95 existed. Often we'd caravan with my cousins and share cottages. The trip was always half the fun  playing car games in the back seats, while our dads played games on the highway. My uncle disappeared from in front of us once and my mom exclaimed. "Good Lord he's flying!" Dad replied "He's just familiar with this road." It was as much a justification for the speed as it was a rationale for why he couldn't keep up.
it was about big American Iron, and rest stop rendezvous and stopping for sodas and ice cream in the middle of nowhere. It was about experiencing how big America was.
Cars goes right to the heart of that, to Route 66. You sense of the size of America, and how cars move around in its parts, and how we're losing the uniqueness (and the awareness of that uniqueness) to interstate homogeneity. There are subtle, visual hints to the heavy-handed way the interstate slices through the country side, and there's even a brief preachy/diagrammatic point, but only for a few moments. It makes those points with character development and a good story. The power of the film -- the way it really gets to your heart -- comes from the way Lasseter uses the visuals and develops his characters. The visuals are positively breathtaking. The scene where the cars race down country roads, in and out of shadows, past waterfalls and up a mountain revitalizes the lost joy of just going for a ride.
And the character development is augmented by the CG. More than just cartoony facial expressions and over the top dialogue, the cars are displayed with fantastic realism that makes the chrome shine realer than real, and the engine rumble stir your soul. When they pan across the chrome Hudson logo, it's like the helicopters coming at you playing Wagner in Apocalypse Now.
My dad ran big, bland Mopar station-wagons, while my uncle had a sleek red Chevy Impala convertible. Dad's second car was always a Valiant/Dart, but uncle Rich rotated a parade of wild, unique, and fun cars behind the Chevy. A huge yellow Pontiac Catalina convertible, an early 60's Cadillac Fleetwood, a mid-fifties Ford coupe  a lot of junkers and nothing very "nice". I remember his Hudson the most though.
Paul Newman voices the Hornet. He's great; so is the carit's the soul of the movie. Like other movies, there are variations in character development, but this movie seems to augment and parallel character development with drawing complexity. Shallow characters have forgettable details, while well developed characters are remarkably catching. Richard Petty's (Sr.) high-wing Roadrunner is lovingly detailed, while the Michael Keaton (bad guy) car is a non-descript mid-80's Regal or Cutlass. His character is shallow, like its representation. Even Lightning, the protagonist gains detail after his "awakening."
My dad had a big box of old Popular Science magazines I read all the time, cover to cover. And I mean old. There was "Gus's Garage", and "Say Smokey", and of course, the car tests. I excitedly read the 1949 road test of the "Hundred Mile an Hour Hudson". It was full of superlatives, and the pictures were thrilling, even fifteen years later. Right around 1965, I'm twelve, and everyone's introducing their "fastback" models  the original Dodge Charger, the glass-back Barracuda, the Mercury Montego and the AMC Marlin (the fastest looking rambler ever). And Uncle Rich shows up with a sleek, low, baddass, fast- lookin' 49 Hudson fastback. It was dark and ominously un-shiny, and grey inside, and smelled vaguely like the basement at the old drugstore. And as I remember, it never ran very well or for very long.
But man it looked fast.
Paul Newman is Hudson Hornet cool. Knowing his skill as a racer made it even better for me. The Hornet's even got blue eyes.
If you like cars, you'll love the movie cars. Check out NPR's Click and Clack as the Dart and the Tradesman; they're a hoot. Tony Shaloub revisits his Italian chef persona from the EXCELLENT "Big Night" with amazing energy. George Carlin's VW van is a welcome throwback to the persona that made him famous. And Cheech Marin plays a metal-flake painted low rider with and over-the-top accent. The rock formations still have me thinking (of course there's Cadillac Ranch), and the signs in the town go by so quick you can't read them all (just like when you're passing through). And there're a ton of other cameo's and little sight gags/inferences that'll make you laugh and then want to see it again (and again) just to see what you missed.
Btw. DVD rendering will NOT do this film justice You gotta see this in the theaters, or at home on HDTV feed.