Tractors is so stupid......

Rating: 9/10 (10 June 2006)

I, like most fans of Pixar studios, felt my heart sink when I saw the first preview for "Cars" when it ran in front of "The Incredibles" in 2004. There had been previews of other Pixar movies that left me underwhelmed, but this was the first one that looked...well...bad. The constant shots of racing cars, the frenzied editing, the apparent belief that the phrase "dadgum" was funny in and of itself...it just looked like Pixar had come up with their first stinker. I am so glad, no...ecstatic, to say my first instincts were wrong. "Cars" has every bit of the Pixar spirit at its core.
I'm also happy to report that Mater the Tow Truck, who I thought might end up being the most loathed character since Jar-Jar, ended up being one of the funniest, most heartfelt characters in ANY Pixar film.
Every frame of this movie is wonderful to look at, containing all of the vibrant color and rich texture that we expect from Pixar. The voice work is uniformly excellent and, contrary to what I've read in some reviews, the story and script are just as engrossing and imaginative as their other films. Yes, the movie does have a lot of car puns, just like Monsters Inc had monster-ish puns (the "grossery", the "stalk/not stalk" crosswalk sign) and A Bug's Life had a lot of bug puns (the mosquito ordering the "bloody mary, o-positive", but these type of jokes are never the main type of humor. The biggest laughs come from the characters. They stem from knowing their personalities and their foibles. This has always been the key to Pixar's comic genius and "Cars" continues this great tradition.
Plus, the tractor tipping scene is one of the funniest things I've seen in a movie in a VERY long time.