Cars 2

I truly admire Pixar for their animation skills. I had a choice of several movies this week, but I went with Cars 2, instead of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 or Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Seriously, I can't stand Harry Potter. People may think I am anti-nerd, but I read all the books until I realized that Harry would never be truly heroic, at least not in the books. As for the movies, I protest by not having seen a single one. Having a great master wizard named Dumbledore really messed it up. J. K. Rowling really should have worked harder on the name. Dumb, Bumble, Dork, Bore, you see where I am coming from. As for Transformers, I really don't see how that little tiny car can turn into such a big robot. Where does all that mass come from? Too much thinking.

But this is about Cars 2, which is a delightful picture show, which leads off with a Toy Story short cartoon before the movie, just like they used to do in the early days, before we had TV's at home and stuff. The toys are free to play while their kid is on vacation in Hawaii. Ken and Barbie stow themselves away in the kid's luggage, hoping to have some fun in the sun. Unfortunately, they hide in her book bag, which she doesn't take with her. The toys give Ken and Barbie an imaginary Hawaiian vacation.

Cars 2 starts out with a new star, a secret James Bond car named Finn McMissile, voiced by Michael Caine, whom we all know as Alfred, Bruce Wayne's butler in the latest Batman movies. He uncovers a secret plot by a secret conspiracy of lemon cars to discredit alternative fuels. A billionaire Land Cruiser bankrolls a three-part World Grand Prix using his own alternative to gasoline. Lightning McQueen signs up as a contender, and takes his best friend Mater to the Towkyo leg of the race, where Mater gets mixed up in the secret plot.

The premise of the story revolves around a new alternative fuel called Allinol. The billionaire Land Rover returns from an adventure in the wild where he ran out of gas, but managed to develop his new fuel in the Amazon jungle. He converts himself to solar power, which seems a little bit politically correct, and then he sponsors a world race in 3 countries where all the cars will use his new alternative fuel, to prove it is just as good as gasoline. The story does avoid some of the politics about global warming, er, climate change, which is necessary because in Cars 2, they all use gasoline as a source of energy. It really takes away from the fun of a kids' movie when they hide messages in them. The alternative fuel that Cars use in the race, Allinol, is never given a source. We never find out what it really is.

The story is pretty fast-paced, which is what you might expect from a movie about racing cars. The racing scenes are excellent, quite realistic. Some of the action is unrealistic in terms of the actual physics, which takes a little away from the efforts of the animators who work really hard at making their movies as realistic as possible. I would say they achieve about 92% in that department. Ultimately, it is a cartoon, so they can be excused. Mater is actually the star of this movie, with Larry the Cable Guy getting top billing. The Mater character is overused, and is so annoyingly stupid that it is hard to believe. The spy cars become most of the story, with Mater working along with them, and Lightning McQueen almost a bit part. Still, it works pretty well, and has plenty of car action for the kids, plot action for the adults, and humorous characterizations of cars in place of their human counterparts, like the Pope and the Queen of England.

Cars 2 is a very enjoyable movie experience. I am a big fan of Pixar, and never miss a chance to see their movies in the theater. Cars 2 is well worth a trip to the theater before it goes to DVD and On-Demand. I give it 4 shurikens for being a really great animated film with great characterizations and really top-notch animated action, but the Mater character takes some patience to deal with.