Cars 2

I think a lot of people are going to be surprised by the direction Cars 2 takes compared to the original film, and not in a good way. The movie takes the quiet and laid back car-folks of Radiator Springs, and plops them into the middle of a generic globe-trotting James Blond plot. Even as someone who was not exactly an admirer of Cars, I at least could say that movie had its heart in the right place. This sequel is as cold and as soulless as they come, existing only because the first movie was a merchandising juggernaut for Disney, and the studio wanted some new characters to market.

First off, I'm not against the idea of Cars 2 being an action film. Heck, Pixar's previous attempt at an action comedy (2004's The Incredibles) still stands as one of my favorite films to come out of the studio. And I admire that directors John Lasseter and Brad Lewis tried to take the characters in a different direction, which is usually more fun than just rehashing what worked with audiences last time. That's not the case here, though. I don't think the characters belong in this kind of movie. The idea of Mater, the slow-witted rusted tow truck from the first movie (voiced by comedian Larry the Cable Guy), being mistaken for an international spy probably sounded better on paper than it works in the film itself. He's a hapless hero with a low brow Southern drawl, but that's not enough. The movie doesn't have enough fun with the idea of Mater being forced into a situation where he finds himself in over his head. The set up there, but if the character of Mater is going to carry an entire movie, we have to be able to identify with him in some way, and I never did. He's a buffoon, and not an interesting one.

And yes, Mater is the star of this sequel. The star of the previous movie, hot rod Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson), has been pushed aside in a supporting role, but at least he gets to kick off the plot. McQueen is invited to compete in an international race that covers different cities around the world including Tokyo, the fictional city of Porto Corsa in Italy, and London. The race itself is the brainchild of Sir Miles Axelrod (Eddie Izzard), who has developed a new source of clean alternative fuel, and is having all the cars participating in the race use his fuel in an effort to show its effectiveness. McQueen accepts the invitation, mainly so he can show up a rival who is also competing in the race, the egotistical Italian race car, Francesco Bernoulli (a spirited John Turturro). He brings Mater along on the globe-trotting adventure to work in his pit crew during the race, and through a series of plot developments too complex to summarize, Mater ends up being separated from his friend, and going on an adventure of his own, where he's mistaken for a top secret government agent by a pair of British spy cars.

The cars in question are the suave and well-named Finn McMissile (Michael Caine), and the equally well-named Holley Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer). They're tracking down some villains who work for a mysterious big oil manufacturer, and are attempting to sabotage the race in an effort to "prove" that the alternative fuel is not a suitable replacement for gasoline. Mater becomes involved when a severely wounded American agent is transporting a vital piece of information to the British spy cars, and secretly hands it over to the unknowing tow truck. Now that he has the information, the spies think that Mater is the informant they were supposed to meet, and that he's merely posing as a dim-witted truck as a cover. The idea of a simple character being mistaken for a hero is a well-worn comedy idea, and was used much better in an animated film earlier this year called Rango. This is a movie that's content to repeat the same idea over and over. (Mater is a simpleton who keeps on having good luck, and everyone around him thinks he's pretending to be a simpleton.)

As Cars 2 went on, I became restless with how it kept on wasting its own opportunities. Take the lead spy car, Finn McMissile. The fact that he's voiced by Michael Caine is a great piece of casting. But then what? The movie never goes to Step 2, by making Finn an interesting character, or even someone we can care about. He gets a great introduction scene, showing off his various built in spy gadgets, but he spends a majority of the rest of the film in the background. A good movie would have given him more to do within the film itself. A great movie would have done this, as well as give him a personality we could get behind. Instead of making these new characters memorable, they insert them into endless action scenes that are certainly drawn and animated extremely well (as if one would expect anything less from Pixar), but become tiresome quickly when they essentially boil down to sound and fury.

Another missed opportunity is the film's theme of seeing the world. I was interested to see the world outside of Radiator Springs from the first movie, but most of the film's exotic locations merely exist as backdrops for action sequences. The scenes early on set in Tokyo get things off to a good start, as there are some gentle jabs at Japanese pop culture. But the movie drops this angle early on, and becomes dragged down in its own spy plot, having the characters racing about the world without really developing any interesting ideas these far off places could inspire. Rather, you get the sense that you're watching an extended marketing blitz, with all these new characters (who are certain to make great toys) running about the screen. Maybe that's why Cars 2 feels so hollow at its center - It's really just a marketing blitz, and not a very well-hidden one at that. I'm certain this movie will make some big bucks in toy stores all summer and beyond, but I also know that Pixar is better than this, and will be much better in the near future.

Would I call the movie a total failure? Not really. Some scenes are a lot of fun to watch, and the animation and art is always impressive. But, a lot of people expect more from Pixar. Even if they were just trying to make a mindless summer action blockbuster (which I'm guessing was the reasoning here), they come up short, as the action isn't strong enough for us to forget there's not a lot going on emotionally. Cars 2 certainly ranks as one of the studio's weakest efforts, but when your main goal is to sell merchandise, can that really be a surprise?

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