While I was pleasantly surprised by my recent, long overdue, viewing of Cars, I knew that I shouldn’t get my expectations too high for either of the sequels. Although I have forgotten the full conversation, I remember hearing that one was dire and one was a pleasant surprise. I hope the third Cars movie is a pleasant surprise, because this one wasn’t very good.
When Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) rises to the challenge of racing Francesco Bernoulli (John Turturro) he ends up unwittingly amidst a scheme that could lead to the death of many cars. It’s all to do with selling fuel, but a couple of secret agents (voiced by Michael Caine and Emily Mortimer) are on the case. Unfortunately, a misunderstanding leads to them thinking that Mater (Larry The Cable Guy) is working alongside them. There are chases, there are death traps, and there are many moments that have Mater defying the odds to make progress in his “mission”.
While I understand the need to avoid a complete replay of the first movie, Cars feels like a movie series with a limited number of plot options. And, let’s face it, many successful franchises have managed to repeat a formula over and over again, with minor tweaks, including a certain other huge Pixar title. Kids are especially pleased by repetition, which makes the road taken here (no pun intended) all the more bizarre.
Writer Ben Queen does what he can with the premise, presenting a kid-friendly James Bond adventure with Mater being the accidental hero of the piece, but he ends up delivering something incredibly weak. The main lesson feels overwhelmed by the secret agent shenanigans, and the secret agent shenanigans pale in comparison to almost any other film in this vein that you can think of. It doesn’t help that co-directors John Lasseter and Bradford Lewis don’t seem to have any interest in elevating the material, relying on the voice cast to make up for the many weaker elements.
That would be okay if the voice cast was better, but it’s not great. Caine and Mortimer ARE great, but they are absolute highlights here. Wilson is fine, but sidelined in favour of everything else going on, Turturro is equally undone by his relatively limited dialogue (he is fun when he gets time to chatter away), and the likes of Eddie Izzard, Joe Mantegna and others are wasted in supporting roles that don’t give them enough to do. The person who gets to do plenty is Larry The Cable Guy, who is enjoyable enough as Mater, but also quite an acquired taste (although there’s a chance that younger viewers will just lap up everything he says and does).
I didn’t absolutely hate this, mainly thanks to the slick visuals and a couple of small gags that made me chuckle, but it was very disappointing. Am I wrong for wanting another plot that saw Lightning McQueen having to learn some new tactics for a different kind of racing? Probably. Could that have been better than this bit of silliness though? Probably. It gets bonus points for the casting of Caine though, who is the best thing about it.
4/10
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