It is with supreme confidence that I shimmied off to the preview of Cars 2 with my eight-year-old son riding shotgun. We have come to expect greatness from Pixar – from the Pretty Much Perfect Trilogy of Toy Story, through to ‘Finding Nemo’…
Cars 2
It is with supreme confidence that I shimmied off to the preview of Cars 2 with my eight-year-old son riding shotgun. We have come to expect greatness from Pixar – from the Pretty Much Perfect Trilogy of Toy Story, through to ‘Finding Nemo’ and the ‘Incredibles’.
They don’t seem to ever have any clangers – like Disney did recently with The Princess and the Frog. They are consistant, technically groundbreaking with out really being in your face, and have a brilliant sense of humour. They understand that they need to appeal to the grown ups that accompany the small people in their lives, but not pitch the humour too high that the kids miss it. They tend to choose protagonists that have a fairly universal appeal – toys, fish, super heroes etc.
And with their Cars franchise they have had another go at their pitch perfect run – aside from the original Cars itself, which I personally maintain was their most lacklustre. That said – it was still streets above most animated films being pumped out at present. Cars 2 has great graphics, excellent characters, lots of kid jokes AND adult humour.
This film is firmly all about the boys. I know there were lots of jokes going on there that I missed. Jokes about grand prix drivers, and various brands of cars from various parts of the globe that I did not recognise. But that I have to say is just about my only real issue with it. It had a lot of bang for its buck with masses of bond-esque sequences.
It introduces several new principal characters, Finn McMissile (voiced by the splendid Michael Caine) and Holly Shiftwell (voiced by Emily Mortimer) as two British secret agents. The hugely funny Eddie Izzard is completely underused as Miles Axelrod and John Turturro is Grand Prix rival Francesco Bernoulli. The scenery is breathtaking and they must have spent several years pouring over grand prix racing footage to get all of that looking so excellent. Even I could recognise British driver, Lewis Hamilton as a car of himself.
All of that said – I am not their target audience, and my eight year old gave it 10 out of 10 as we walked out. But I asked him again today what he thought and he couldn’t really remember it (that translates to not particularly memorable I feel). His favourite bits were all the sight gags with Tow Mater the towtruck getting all the laughs. Maybe it didn’t need to be quite so complicated visually. It strikes me that all you have to say is a movie is about Cars, particularly race Cars, and half of the male population is there already.
This movie is a 3 in Pixar Land, and a 4 in Other Movie World. Cars 2 – opens 23rd June nationwide.
By Anya Brighouse 22 June 2011.
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