Good but not great film whose main failing seems to be just not hitting the bar set by its predecessors

Rating: Null/10 (24 April 2008)

Lightening McQueen is a rookie racing in The Piston Cup and set to make history by being the first rookie to win it as it comes down to a three way decider between him, a retiring champion and the car who has been building his whole career to this victory. However while on his way to California for the deciding race, Lightening gets separated from his trailer and finds himself on the interstate and suddenly the thing he has never needed as a race car has become important  headlights. Lightening gets off the road and speeds his way through a small town where he is caught for speeding and sentenced to community service. While the small town people grate on Lightening, he knuckles down to the task, knowing the clock is ticking.
For some reason Cars was not as well received by critics as some other Pixar films had been but I was confident that the studio could still give me something worth seeing. Watching it I can understand why the film maybe didn't go down that well but this is far from saying that the film is no good or even average. The film has a solid plot where we have an arrogant hero learning valuable life lessons from "simple" folk and pretty much you know where it is all going to go and indeed so it does. The twist here is that the characters are all cars and I did enjoy the logic within this alternative universe and it was this that made the film for me because I didn't find the plot strong enough on its own. However the themes of the racing world, simple townsfolk, media hype and so on are better such as they are done.
Two hours is probably too long to sustain though and the material does feel a bit stretched at times and it doesn't quite zing along in the way some other Pixar films have, where everything comes thick and fast. This is particularly evident in the laugh department because the film is not really that funny although it does manage to be consistently amusing  again it does feel a bit harsh to be criticising a film for this but I suppose the phrase is "victims of their own success" when it comes to Pixar because it is hard not to compare with the previous films, all of which have set the bar very high. The touches are all fun (I loved the cows in this alternative reality) and generally it is all good stuff but personally I did miss the really strong "one-liner" characters.
This is not to criticise the cast because I did really enjoy Shalhoub and Quaroni in these side roles but just that the material didn't serve them as well as others have been. Wilson was a good bit of casting as his usual character fits Lightening well. Likewise Newman seems like a no-brainer and his voice is a great presence. Hunt is so-so and Larry the Cable Guy is good, if a bit one-note. Cheech, Lewis, Dooley and others are reasonable if not that great. Minor roles from Piven, Keaton, Leno, Schumacher and others add colour (well, the latter adds the colour "grey" in his own unique style). Although Ratzenberger does have a small role in the main film, I did enjoy his contribution to the end credits.
Overall then this is an enjoyable and consistently amusing film from Pixar and the only real problem with it is that it is certainly not up to their usual standard in regards mixing laughs with a strong plot. Not brilliant but I think it is a sort of backwards compliment to the high standards set by Pixar that a film that is just a solid "good" comes over a bit disappointing.