When the first movie came out, I remember reading articles in the LA times saying that John Lasseter was a big fan of racing. I’m sure he loves the movie and the characters. With that being said, this movie definitely seems like Pixar is acting more like its parent company Disney and looking at $$$ rather than trying to make a compelling story.
People not interested in racing will not be interested in the story nearly as much. I am another person who will probably be skipping it in the theatres and waiting for the DVD release.
I’m perfectly willing to allow Disney to make and sell fun toys, as long as they allow me to give my negative opinion about the movies they make to market those toys. There is tons of merchandising based around the Toy Story characters, but the critics did not hold that against the Toy Story movie or its sequels. The first Cars was probably my least favourite Pixar movie. Unless the sequel is better than the original (which seems doubtful considering the reviews), it will be the new one at the bottom of my list.
I will agree that the worst Pixar movie is still going to be better than many of the top productions of other kiddie franchises. If you are at Target and had to choose between Cars 2, a VeggieTales DVD, and a straight-to-DVD Disney sequel of one of their animated features, which one would you pick?
Someone gave my kids the Ratatouille Kitchen Quake board game and they enjoyed it. As a matter of fact, when it was my five-year-old’s turn to pick a movie for movie night last Saturday, he chose Ratatouille.
I saw it. Not horrendous, but definitely the weakest Pixar flick I’ve seen. I couldn’t figure out what bothered me the most about it, until I went home and put the first Cars into the DVD, then it hit me. The Animation just wasn’t as good. Who knows, maybe it was better in some intrinsic way that I just missed, but many of the scenes in the priginal just seemed…lush(?) in comparison. Greater attention to detail, more realistic backgrounds, etc. For a Pixar movie to take a step backwards in quality - THAT’S not a good sign.
The point here is that, up until now, Pixar hasn’t made OK kids’ movies. They have made spectacular movies that are be enjoyed by kids and grown-ups alike. If you’re making a Pixar movie and just aiming to entertain kids, you’re aiming a bit low, IMHO.
They’re victims of their own success - because of the movies they did, people expect everything they do to be gold. When it’s just an okay movie, people complain because visibility and public/critical attention is a bit higher when you’re Pixar.
Actually, Cars 2 doesn’t have that much racing. There is a racing plot, but it’s not the main plot.
Anyway, my Lightning Mcqueen obsessed 3 yr old enjoyed it, but I could tell he didn’t like it as much as the first. Not enough Lightning, no Chick, hardly any Mac, and too much Mater.
(Yes, my kid loves Chick and Mac from the first movie. Sleeps with them and Lightning every night).
I’m not particularly interested in cooking, tropical fish, monsters, vintage toys, garbage collectors, or old people. But I enjoyed Ratatouille, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., Toy Story, WALL-E, and Up.
There’s more than a hint of apologism in “well, if you don’t like cars/racing, that’s why you thought Cars was a mediocre Pixar entry.” It’s true, I’m not into racing. And yet despite have absolutely zero interest in haute cuisine, I thought Ratatouille was great.
You don’t need to be deep into the movie’s source of inspiration for the movie to draw you in. The movie should make you interested in the source material.
Just saw it today. It’s a good movie worth watching but I don’t think it’ll be remembered as one of Pixar’s greats.
The biggest flaw I found was the change of genre. They essentially took the characters of Cars and put them in a James Bond movie. No insult to the characters or the genre but it made an awkward fit. It would be like if they had tried to make Monsters, Inc. with the characters from A Bug’s Life.
The thought just hit me that this movie was actually an Speed Racer movie…
With Speed’s younger brother Spritle and Chim Chim the monkey as the main stars.
As my brother saw Speed Racer, he reported to me that even though not as good as other Pixar efforts, Cars 2 was what Speed Racer was attempting to be with its mix of spies and racing, just a little better.
The world of Cars is a Ballardian dystopian nightmare where automated factory machinery has taken over the world and populated it with sentient cars. They reproduce by crashing into each other at high speeds, exchanging fluids through their smashed radiators and mangled engines.
Here’s an article from the New York Times today talking about how Cars 2 meant that Pixar surrendered to Disney. The writer says, “I saw flashes of the wit (a pope-mobile) and brilliance (a tour of neon-saturated Tokyo) that reminded me of what I’ve loved about so many Pixar features. But about an hour into it, I felt the inexorable weight of its four genres (buddy picture, spy caper, car race and environmental consciousness-raiser) shoehorned into one incoherent plot. I experienced no emotional connection to the story or characters —unlike every other Pixar film I’ve seen.”
BTW, the article mentions that Jay Rasulo, the CFO of Disney, gave a presentation in February on the value of franchises. Here’s a link to the PDF of that presentation. In particular, he compares Disney’s recent Alice in Wonderland movie (directed by Tim Burton and starred Johnny Depp) to Toy Story 3. The Alice in Wonderland movie was very successful with total sales of $1.6 billion, but Toy Story 3 was much more successful with total sales of $9.8 billion, much of which was merchandise sales. So I’d expect to see Pixar make more movies like Cars and Toy Story and fewer like Ratatouille and Up.
We just saw it. I liked it, and have a hard time understanding why people find this so objectionable, but then again, I’m a pushover for Disney and Pixar animation. (Or just about any animation, for that matter)
It’s not like they made The Land Before Time XIII or something.
There was a lot of good CG animation and clever little jokes and in-jokes, the bulk of which I probably missed.
By the way, the team that made this must be SpongeBob SquarePants fans.
[spoiler] The only thing they needed to do was to call the S.P.E.C.T.R.E.-like organization E.V.I.L.
The writer who “experienced no emotional connection to the story or characters” is a fifty-something Professor of Business Journalism at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. I am not too sure that Disney/Pixar/Lasseter considered fifty- something Grad School Professors to be part of the target audience for this particular film. This guy probably hated the introduction of Chachi onto Happy Days and the Ewoks into Star Wars (I am not even going to mention Jar Jar, I don’t want to get BBQed!). I think people only 8 and under should be allowed to review this movie. You know, someone who is quite old enough to feel inexorable weight of genres yet. C’mon, it is not like Pixar made the Green Lantern! Who wants to pretend they are the Green Lantern? And have you seen those toys? They suck!
Word. I saw it yesterday and rated it at 6 on IMDb so I won’t call it a bad movie, just the worst Pixar movie ever, and yes, I liked Cars (the original) – it appealed to the motorhead in me.
The main lack I think, was that I just didn’t care what happened to the characters, especially Mater. I cared what happened to Woody and Buzz in all three of their movies. I cared what happened to Carl, WALL-E, Remy, the Parr family, Nemo, Boo, and Flik. I didn’t even have to look up their names* when I was making the list. Cars 2 I didn’t care; I was just watching a reasonably good action flick unreel. The closest was when Mater discovered he was being laughed at, but that was a quick moment, quickly submerged in the movie’s ongoing stream. As I said when I was walking out of the theater, that extra something Pixar has in their movies was missing in this one.
I did like the moment of silence marking Paul Newman’s passing and wondered why they did not do the same for George Carlin but as it turned out, Filmore was essential to the plot.
*I do confess I looked up the movies’ release dates to make sure I got them in the right order.
Saw it last night with my 8 year old daughter and 6 year old son.
The boy loved it. As in flapping his arms and bouncing in his seat. This is the perfect movie for little boys. Cars, explosions, a train, spy moves. Well I guess it is missing dinosaurs and volcanoes, but otherwise perfect. He walked out of the movie wanting to know when it’ll be on Nexflix.
My daughter liked it well enough, & came out of the movie saying she enjoyed it but won’t be begging to see it again.
My husband and I found it to be too video-game like and too violent. The racing scenes could be dropped wholesale into a video game without missing a beat, which made me focus on the technical aspects of the movie instead of being absorbed in the story. There is a torture scene, cars get blown up, and in the opening scene, without spoiling it I can say body (car) parts are shown and pretty damn gratuitously. Ok granted it is an animation movie but it still seemed more violent than necessary. My kids are not snowflakes and I’m not a helicopter but still it seemed over the top.
The story was alright; it didn’t break any new ground in terms of being a spy flick but it was serviceable. Anyone could have been in the parts though - there wasn’t anything core to the story that required the characters be Mater and McQueen specifically. I rolled my eyes at a couple of the twists and turns. The in jokes and puns were funny enough.
The animation of the foreign locations was freaking awesome. Awesome.
Overall I’d give it a B+, and that high only because it did the job I asked it to - made my boy transcendentally happy for a couple of hours.
