Cars 2 Review
We are in week number 2 of my Cars review series today we are talking about Cars 2. And in a couple of weeks a new tv show set in this world, Cars: On the Road drops on Disney+. So how is this movie? Is it as bad as people say it is? Let’s get started!
The Good:
I’m going to start this review the same way I started my review of Cars, by saying that I have a lot of nostalgia for this movie. I was born October 16th, 2004 and this movie came out in June 2011 so if my math is correct (which is iffy because I got a C- in Math this year), I was six years old when this movie came out. And that means I was the perfect age for when this movie came out, I ate this movie up. And after this movie I’m not sure which one I liked more, this one or Cars. So everytime I watch this movie I do have a lot of nostalgia for this movie and find it entirely watchable. I’m never bored by it, and I just get sucked up by this adventure pretty easily. So I know this is a movie that people hold to pretty low regards when it comes to Pixar movies, I can get that. But I can get a lot of entertainment value from watching this movie.
Another thing is I just like spy movies, you can debate whether a spy thriller fits inside the Cars franchise. But I do think that with spy movies they are fun. They have this certain charm and fun about them. And just doing a spy thriller with twists and turns and a villain reveal is fun to see on screen. So like I said, you can debate as to whether the spy route was the right direction to go for this franchise but I still get entertainment out of it.
From there, I do think there are some nice characters here. And it is just fun to be back in this world with these characters, as somebody who grew up with these characters I always like going back to this world. And just getting more of that, is once again…fun (I know I’ve said that a lot in this review). But even the new characters with Finn McMissile as this old spy voiced by Michael Caine is great. And once again they got a great set of actors for the characters with John Turturro, Bruce Campbell, and Jason Isaac voicing different characters in the movie.
Finally, this is a movie that once again has a great animation style to it. It’s very colorful and vibrant, and makes for a great looking Pixar movie. And the way they shoot the racing sequences, not just in this movie but in all of them really mixed with the animation style just looks great and they are fun to watch, while being eye candy as well.
The Bad:
And while this is a movie that I’ve said repeatedly I have a lot of nostalgia for I can recognize the movie’s faults and issues. First up, I think there was a big mistake with making Mater the lead character. It felt like they were looking over what audiences really liked about the first movie, saw that Matter was a stand out and went “let’s make a movie all about Mater ''. And they did, but Mater was never designed to be a lead character. For me, Mater is like salt. You add a little bit of salt to your dish and it’s a nice touch, it adds something fresh to the mix. But you never put a big spoonful of salt on your dish because it just ruins it. And that’s what this movie feels like and making Mater the lead character. And I’m wondering how much better the movie would have been if Matter was very much a secondary lead and McQueen still took the lead. Like having Mater’s arc and journey be the secondary storyline to McQueen racing and cars being blown up. I think that would have worked much much better, maybe.
Another big issue here is the tone is widely inconsistent with itself. Where you have scenes where cars are being tortured and then killed. Cars blowing up on the race track and then being killed. You have a lot of cars dying in this movie, in the same movie where Mater says “I want to suck your gas” as he’s dressed up like a vampire. Those two things just don’t fit well in this movie, they don’t fully come together in the end for me. So I get that they wanted to make a movie that had a bit of an edge to it, and create an environment where nobody is safe. But I feel like there was another way to do that without cars dying.
This ties back into what I mentioned before but there is a lot of low hanging fruit humor in this movie. The stand-out with this would be when Mater dressed as a vampire says “I want to suck your gas”, it’s funny as a kid. But the older you get the more you realize that it’s pretty cheap basic humor that just doesn’t work. I get that it’s a kids movie, and six year olds are the target audience. But there should be a few jokes that both kids and adults can laugh at.
Finally, this goes back to what I mentioned in my review of Cars. Where this is a movie that is very much going for a young demographic, and it’s not exploring ideas or as deep as other Pixar movies are. And I think that more so ties to this movie then the original movie, where this is a movie that just feels like it was made to print money and sell more toys. So the movie really isn’t exploring big ideas and doesn’t have a lot of emotions. Which is something that Pixar is known for doing so well, and when that’s lost in a movie I think it kind of holds the movie back.
Final Thoughts: In general, Cars 2 is a movie that is very flawed. I can get it when people rant on this movie for 20 minutes straight and say it’s the bottom of the barrell for Pixar movies. But I still have a lot of nostalgia for this movie, I find it entirely watchable for that reason. And so while it is bottom tier Pixar, I would put it in the top of the bottom tier for me. Because I have nostalgia and it is watchable.
The Score: 7.7/10 (C+)
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