That car had nice curves.

Rating: 9/10 (17 June 2006)

I went into Cars a little nervous. After the two towering hits of The Incredibles and Finding Nemo, I didn't think that a movie about automobiles (and the very unassuming title) could even come close to the soul and wit. Anticlimactically, though, it does. It so totally does. It's a little creepy that the world is now run by cars, and you wonder what kind of bloody massacres kept the humans out of the picture, but the brilliance of the first race keeps your mind off that kind of thing. Computer Animation (Especially at Pixar, most other companies, like the one that did hoodwinked look kind of cheap) has come so far that things like the sheen of a car and the clouds in the sky look very real while the talking cars still look properly cartoonish. There have been some complaints that the movie slows down a bit when Lightening McQueen, the main car gets lost in the backwater town of Radiator Springs, but IMHO this is where the movie really finds its heart. I hate to say I liked anything with Larry the Cable Guy, but his portrayal of Mater was real good (If you clamp your ears before he says Git-R-Dunn) and Bonnie Hunt's Porsche was a real beautiful car that you'd like to sit inside for a bit, just playing with her radio. Of course, the movie snaps back into big city racing with a touching finale, but one could only watch those front and end Xtr33m pieces for a bit. The middle, though, represents the town of radiator springs perfectly: soothing and cute and you'd like to stay there for awhile.