I had heard a few negative things about ‘Cars 2′ before I saw the film, but I wrote most of them off.
It seems to me that sometimes people get overly-bothered by films not “having enough heart,” or not adhering to what they think they should have been about, or not being emotional enough.
Depending on the type of story being told, I’m personally fine with any of that. Films don’t necessary have to be super-emotional to be enjoyable. I’m more than happy to take the old-fashioned entertainment and escapism of an action movie or the low-brow stylings of a ruckus comedy when that’s what is on the menu.
In one of John Lasseter’s interviews released before the ‘Cars 2′ came out, he framed the film as a “full-on spy movie” in which the characters are “taken around the world.” That sounded great to me. It would obviously give the film plenty of source material to pull from and work with.
Pixar is surprisingly adept at making even the simplest of ideas come to life. I was excited to see a spy-themed movie from them. Unfortunately, ‘Cars 2′ isn’t really a thrilling spy movie, as Lasseter claimed.
I have no doubts that if Pixar actually wanted to do an full-blown animated feature about spying it could turn out well. In fact, I hope they still plan to do one someday.
But spy movies have fundamental elements that ‘Cars 2′ lacks. In particular, they use constructs that give them a sense of intrigue and mystery. Apart from the solid opening scene, which is exciting and well-orchestrated, there aren’t any other action sequences worth noting that lend this enough credibility to be called a thriller or action film. And aside from not knowing who the ultimate bad guy is, there is no mystery or intrigue to be found.
Instead, for a long time during the showing, I thought ‘Cars 2′ was supposed to be some sort of message movie about how destructive gasoline is. The central plot revolves around a new type of fuel, “Allinol,” that is intended to make gasoline obsolete. (Don’t ask me why electric cars need fuel, they apparently just do.) The movie even goes so far as to make all of the bad guys oil company owners, and strongly implies throughout that only old, clunker lemons would want to continue to use oil.
This theme was hammered home pretty intensely at various points, to the extent that I thought Pixar might actually suffer a bit of backlash for pushing it so strongly. I mean, if people were offended by the obese, processed-foods scarfing ship residents depicted in Wall-E, who knows what some peoples’ reactions might be to watching a sustained attack against big oil conglomerates.
Personally though, I was fine with this angle. Cars 2 could be a message movie for all I cared. Gasoline truly is on its way out, something I’m sure paying $4.50 per gallon at the pump every week has tipped many of us off to. It is a fossil fuel, after all. And underseas oil drilling is often times very destructive. Message movies frequently aren’t as compelling as old-fashioned story-telling, but they still have their redeeming qualities.
Sadly, Cars 2 managed to be dysfunctional even on this level. The ending of the film makes a complete about face. It turns out that Allinol was a massive scam all along, and only bio-diesel or gasoline fuels are actually viable. Nearly every car that used Allinol is essentially blown up on the race track. So much for that message about trusting your friends!
Lasseter said that ‘Cars 2′ was produced so that our favorite characters could be taken around the world. Although that sounds like it could be fun and exciting with the right treatment, it just didn’t play out successfully on screen. I went in expecting a travelogue of sorts, but the most memorable scene that illustrated any cultural differences is from the trailer, where Mater suffers at the hands of a futuristic, automated lavatory system in Tokyo.
The pacing also seemed to be somewhat off throughout the film, which is extremely out of character for Pixar. ‘Cars 2′ almost doesn’t have the normal scene structure that one would expect, instead every shot rolls quickly forward with very little pause, like one huge, extended montage. This makes everything seem superficial because individual scenes are never explored in any depth.
It frequently feels abrupt and rushed. The viewer leaves each scene never feeling the intensity that the depicted sequence of events was supposed to convey. Some stuff happens, you move to the next shot, then the next. It’s all very cursory. Even the near-death scenes aren’t close to being scary, a massive change compared to ‘Toy Story 3,’ where the intensity of one of the incinerator scenes practically gave me an existential crisis.
The animation is as beautiful as ever; Pixar has always specialized in making their visuals impressive and immersive, and ‘Cars 2′ is no exception. Credit also has to be given to the two new cast members. In the vacuum of anything else interesting happening onscreen, Michael Caine and Emily Mortimer make the movie watchable in their roles as British special agents.
The culprits here are the writing and the direction. The story being told simply isn’t compelling, on any level. The funny parts of the movie aren’t funny enough. After the opening scene, the action sequences aren’t exciting. The satire of the spy film genre you would expect to see is practically non-existent. The message of the film about alternate energy is muddled at best. Several of the supporting characters are so obnoxiously stereotypical that they come off as more annoying than entertaining.
Even the central theme about friendship barely works, mainly because the two central protagonists hardly seem like true friends. Short of spending one day hanging out together, which is one of the few sequences in the film that feels genuine, they spend most of their time at odds with one another, trying to reconcile fundamental differences.
Worst of all, ‘Cars 2′ just isn’t funny. I know humor is highly subjective; but even so, I think most observers would have to admit that the comedic scenes here are grossly mismanaged. There is nothing that compares to the many boisterously funny sequences in ‘Toy Story 3.’ ‘Cars 2′ basically lacks any sort of comedic spark, which is pretty bad news for a movie that is mostly intended to be a comedy.
All in all, ‘Cars 2′ ends up just being a mediocre experience. Even if the film was intended only as an entertaining lark, Pixar would still have been well-advised to put a bit more time into producing a stronger final product than this.
