Seen it. Was reasonably entertaining. Even in 3D it wasn’t all that. They could have ported the whole story over to Scooby Doo and achieved the same result.
The thing that really lost it for me was that there was no emotional investment in the whole movie. Almost none, anyway.
Count me in with the few brave souls who liked the original ***Cars ***a lot more than Pixar’s more acclaimed movies.
My son owns most of Pixar’s movies, and I find Cars far less painful to watch than*** Ratatouille ***or the first Toy Story (I liked both sequels a lot more than the original).
Rotten Tomatoes Update…
39% based on 54 reviews…yikes.
“With “Cars 2,” Pixar goes somewhere new: the ditch.”
-Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Cars 2 is such a mess, it makes the original look like it ought to rank among Pixar’s masterpieces by comparison.”
-Christy Lemire
Ebert Liked it, however…
“At a time when some “grown-up” action films are relentlessly shallow and stupid, here is a movie with such complexity that even the cars sometimes have to pause and explain it to themselves.”
I can buy toys that are alive. I can buy fish and birds talking to each other. I can buy a world with supers living among us. I can even buy a rat that can cook.
I do not know why, but I simply cannot buy cars without drivers. I cannot buy cars in stands watching other cars race.
It might be the “where do they come from?” factor. The toys are made in factories and sold in stores-- They may come alive magically, but the factories still exist. The fish and birds come from other fish and birds reproducing. We even see the rat’s extended family. But the cars seem to be neither born nor made.
I’ve never understood adults watching children’s movies as though they were made for them, but I thought Cars was a perfectly serviceable kids’ movie. Memorable characters, clear plot, obligatory moral harping. Just based on the ads for the Cars 2, it seems an unholy muddle and needlessly complicated.
I wonder if a major factor in writing Cars 2 wasn’t Paul Newman and George Carlin’s death, added to Owen Wilson’s suicide attempt. That would explain the sequel being mostly about Mater if they didn’t know whether Lightning McQueen would even be back.
Unfortunately, I’ve already been compelled to buy a ton of Cars 2 merchandise by a very intransigent family member.
Because almost every Pixar movie up until now wasn’t only a children’s movie.
Agreed. Pixar made its mark with excellent family entertainment. Not just kid’s movies but stuff with plots and gags and emotional hooks everyone would hopefully enjoy rather than the adults barely tolerating it for the sake of the tykes.
If you mean Pixar movies up till now have been kids’ movies that are smarter than the average children’s movie and have elements that appeal to adults, then I agree.
I have a feeling that this may turn into a threadjack as I have a minority view on this issue.
Probably. There need not be a binary classification. A movie can appeal to both kids and adults legitimately without necessarily being a smart kid movie or a dumb adult movie. Nor is an animated movie automatically classified as a kid movie.
This article suggests that maybe it’s John Lasseter. It doesn’t say he pushed for the sequel exactly, but a lot of the drive seems to have come from him.
No, I mean it’s a movie I enjoyed as much as any non-animated film. The entirety of their movies that I love appealed to be as a whole.
I think it’s because you can anthromopormize things that already have bodies and faces much easier than inanimate pieces of machinery. They either are already alive (A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, WALL-E perhaps, etc.), are human or human-like (Toy Story, The Incredible, Up), but a car is not alive nor does it look like it should be able to talk. **Cars **is the one Pixar movie I have not seen, nor did I have any interest in it at all, so I won’t be seeing the sequel.
No. You seem to be operating under the assumption that animation=kid’s movie. That’s simply false. I wouldn’t really classify WALL-E or **UP **as kid’s movies though of course kids enjoy them. The themes of Toy Story 3 are for adults *more *than kids.
I never liked that Pixar got into the whole sequel business. Toy Story 2 & 3 were nice and all but I would have preferred something new. I was disappointed when they announced a Cars 2 and even more so that they have Monsters Inc 2 slated for 2013.
Immersion Goggles? How so 2035! :rolleyes: Might as well ask me to “enjoy” it on some old lame-ass 52 inch TV set (without surround-scent).
From what I have seen it looks like the world’s longest toy commercial. Probably the first Pixar movie I am not even remotely interested in seeing.
This is basically how I feel. I even saw the original Cars, despite it not looking interesting to me at all, because well, it was Pixar. I’ve been burned once, and I don’t intend to make the same mistake with a movie that looks categorically worse.
Actually, the front of cars are commonly designed to present a “face” to the car - cute, aggressive, modern… like the FedEx arrow, once you see it, it’s hard not to NOT see it.
I’ll quote from item #1 in this article:
Five billion? Chocolate Christ on a cookie crutch. My artistic integrity could definitely take a dent for a piece of that.
You guys all meant to say they took the BEST movie EVER made (Pixar or not) and churned out a silly sequel. :dubious:
But if you keep making mistakes like that – where you typo “worst” when you mean “best” and stuff – why, I may just have to believe the sequel is not that bad. 
– **Joe Kerrman, car guy, ***who never knew the Straight Dope and Rotten Tomatoes and people in general could all be so wrong at once. * 