What influenced toys should have remained as toys

Rating: 3/10 (22 May 2016)

Cars, the second Pixar dud I had to sit through (though with lower expectations than A Bug's Life), was unfortunately one of the final films for some absolutely amazing actors, like George Carlin and Paul Newman. The only plus that I can give it is that since it's Pixar, they try with the animation and it paid off: the visuals are cool to stare at if seeming more generic than other Pixar movies. For the rest of the film, however, I was absolutely stultified by how the humor was rather low-quality for a Pixar movie (tractor cattle that can blow flatulence-sounding exhaust, somehow), and how the story couldn't engage me even with one musical scene that I felt recycled excessively from When She Loved Me. Some characters are nice, like Lightning McQueen, who did a Samaritan action near the end that I greatly appreciated and boosted points for, but others mainly make borderline abysmal jokes or act stereotypical or anything other than likable. It just goes to show you that even when John Lasseter is one of the biggest people at the company, that doesn't mean he can make only decent movies. All this movie felt overall was one more reason to sell more Cars-painted Hot Wheels and similar toy cars in order to blast the competition away. It paid off in the toy market, but as a movie it's one that I would pass. The good news is, Pixar recovered from here, this time with something more original than 7 years prior.