MARK NAGLAZAS, The West Australian June 23, 2011, 1:07 pm
Cars 2 (PG) 3 stars
Voiced by Owen Wilson, Larry the Cable Guy, Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer
Directed by John Lasseter
You’ll like this if you liked Cars (not everyone did), the Austin Powers movies, X-Men: First Class and the entire James Bond franchise.
Is Cars 2 Pixar's first lemon? I'm not yet prepared to trade in my Pixar for a DreamWorks (Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon), a Blue Sky (Ice Age, Madagascar), an ILM (which entered the race with Rango) or any of the sleek, lavishly accessorised models challenging the legendary San Francisco company's dominance of the animation Grand Prix.
However, time and again during this wearyingly hectic sequel to Pixar's 2006 hit I was seriously worried it would spin out of control and crash into a wall (or is that a WALL-E?).
The first Cars was a huge hit (hence the sequel) yet it's the least cherished of Pixar's diamond-studded dozen, the one that strays furthest from the company's credo of telling stories not stamped from the Hollywood template (its long life on DVD was fuelled by the merchandising spin-offs).
After having my senses swamped by Cars 2, which sees the red-hot city racer Lightning McQueen and his buddies from the small Western town of Radiator Springs head off for a James Bond-inspired transcontinental adventure, I found myself longing for the laconic, unambitious charms of the earlier movie.
Both editions of Cars are directed by computer animation pioneer and Pixar boss John Lasseter who, unlike the geniuses in the company's legendary brains trust (Andrew Stanton, Brad Bird, Lee Unkrich and so forth), seems more interested in visual astonishments than great storytelling.
Actually, it's not a lack of narrative that makes Cars 2, if not a lemon at least a serious dip in quality for the most consistent maker of masterpieces in modern cinema (and I'm talking about live action or animation).
Rather, Lasseter and writer Ben Queen pack in way too much narrative, so much so that Pixar, for the first time in memory, has resorted to that most depressing strategy of second-rate Hollywood movies - telling not showing. Time and time again the film stops dead in its tracks in order for the head-spinningly convoluted plot to be explained (younger audiences will struggle to know what is going on).
Lasseter signals his intentions in an eye-popping 007-inspired opening sequence in which a suave British spy named Finn McMissile (voiced by Michael Caine) steals on to an oil rig and, after managing to collect some incriminating photographs, pulls off an escape that would have James Bond's Aston Martin revving in appreciation.
Meanwhile, back at Radiator Springs, its most famous resident, the multiple Piston Cup winner Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) is enjoying life with his buddies from the first movie, going out on dinner dates with the sexy Porsche girlfriend Sally (Bonnie Hunt) and tearing around the back roads with the goofy, buck-toothed tow truck Mater (Larry the Cable Guy).
When Lightning is invited to compete in the World Grand Prix, a series of races in which all the competitors must use a new bio-fuel devised by an oil magnate who has had a change of heart (Eddie Izzard), he reluctantly takes along Mater, whose gauche manners are likely to cause more than a few "hick-ups" in the glam world of motor racing.
An incident with a bowl of wasabi, which Mater thinks is pistachio ice-cream, during the Tokyo portion of the World Grand Prix, leads to the rust-addled tow-truck being mistaken for an undercover agent by Finn McMissile and his attractive associate Holley Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer) who are tracking a conspiracy to sabotage the races and defame the bio-fuel.
While the plot of Cars 2 doesn't have the madcap originality of The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL-E or Up (its fun is in the creation of a world in which there are only motor vehicles) all the pieces click nicely together, with the gas guzzlers versus hybrids a clever way of handling the obvious problem of a movie that celebrates organic fuel consumption at a time of global eco-concern.
The problem is that Lasseter, while assailing us with a barrage of visual astonishments, not the least being a series of races so beautiful that they make live-action versions on television seem passe, has not established a rhythm that makes it pleasurable, thrilling, charming or coherent.
There is so much loving attention to detail in creating Tokyo, Paris, the Italian Riviera and London it's a pity that Lasseter, who seems as anxious as his adrenaline-junkie heroes to push his pedal to the metal, didn't slow things down so we can absorb the delights of these wondrously rendered worlds (ironically, that was the message of the first movie).
Also, late in the movie there's a weird little sub-plot in which the great lemons of motoring history, such as the Yugo and the AMC Pacer, are revealed to be in league with the villains of the piece.
In previous films the unloved and forgotten were resuscitated and celebrated by Pixar.
Now they are bitter, twisted and evil misshaped contrasts to sleek sporty models such as Lightning McQueen and his Formula One Italian arch-rival Francesco Bernoulli (John Turturro). Maybe Pixar has won too many races and is getting arrogant.
