Ani-MAY-tion: Cars 2 (2011)

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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Ani-MAY-tion: Cars (2006)

I heard about Cars being made. I wasn’t interested. I saw the trailer for Cars. I wasn’t interested. Cars came and went at the cinema. I wasn’t interested. So why do I own all three Cars movies? Well, I decided I would get them for free when Disney still offered a decent reward scheme on their website. I used points on them, but still couldn’t work up any enthusiasm to actually watch any of them. That changes now. I am determined to watch all three this month, for better or worse. Considering how much I enjoyed this, it may be for the better.

Owen Wilson voices a car named Lightning McQueen, a cocky young racer who is frustrated when his latest race ends in a 3-way tie. The winner will be decided in another race in California, which means a long journey across the country. There’s an unplanned diversion though, and McQueen ends up stuck in the small town of Radiator Springs, where the pace of life is quite a bit slower. Taking things a bit slower can give you plenty of time to learn more and plan ahead better, but that isn’t how McQueen views the situation, despite the patience and determination of the locals.

Directed by John Lasseter and Joe Ranft, who also co-wrote the screenplay with a handful of other writers, Cars isn’t the sharpest Pixar movie, nor is it the wittiest. That’s a high bar though, and I will usually find plenty to enjoy in every one of their animated treats. The main pleasure here comes from the different characters surrounding our misguided lead, voiced by the likes of Paul Newman, Bonnie Hunt, Larry The Cable Guy, and Tony Shalhoub. There’s also a gorgeous visual style throughout, as you would expect, with the characters and environment in perfect simpatico, presenting a world that is so well-realised that viewers can easily accept everything onscreen without any questions, at least until after the end credits have rolled.

Wilson is a good choice for the lead role, his particular vocal style softening the edges of a character that could have been much more annoying throughout the first half of the film. Newman is used well as the elder who offers some sage advice to someone who needs to start listening to others. Both Bonnie Hunt and Larry The Cable Guy are great in main supporting roles, the former being very sweet while the latter delivers plenty of laughs, and Shalhoub gets to steal one or two scenes as Luigi, a huge fan of Ferraris. There are also delightful performances from Paul Dooley, Michael Keaton, George Carlin, Edie McClurg, Richard Kind, and John Ratzenberger (in what I would say is his biggest Pixar role, and allows him to deliver a superb set of meta gags over the end credits).

The pacing is slightly off, just slightly, and there’s an uninspired soundtrack, as well as a clumsy attempt to shoehorn in an extra narrative strand about the small towns that have suffered when new road developments were planned to bypass them, but the sweetness and humour always work well enough to keep you smiling as you wait for the predictable, and rewarding, finale. AND you get a number of cameos that should please motor-racing fans.

It may all be downhill from here, I have heard bad things about at least one of the sequels, but I am now temporarily optimistic about finally making time for this trilogy. I recommend this one to Pixar fans, but (as ever) . . . mileage may vary.

7/10

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A Madea Christmas (2013)

In the interests of full disclosure I have to start this review by saying that this was my first Madea movie. I checked with a friend to find out if I could/should view this one without having seen any of the others and was given the okay (cheers Kieran). And I WILL check out other Madea movies. Not because this one was fantastic - it wasn't - but because I am now fascinated with seeing how Tyler Perry puts his creation into different scenarios.

Having first appeared in a number of stage plays (about half of which have since been adapted into movies), Madea is an elderly African American woman with a hellish attitude, brutal honesty, and the ability to overreact to many minor incidents while staying calm in the face of more emotional moments. This is what I have gleaned from one film anyway. And she is played by Tyler Perry.

Now that we both know a bit about the character, let's move on to the plot of the film. Madea ends up heading along with Eileen (Anna Maria Horsford) to visit Eileen's daughter, Lacey (Tika Sumpter). Lacey has to hide the fact that she is married to a lovely young white man (Conner, played by Eric Lively), pretending that he is her helper, and is also facing trouble at the school she works at, struggling to help fund local Christmas celebrations that will allow the kids to shine. One of those kids is extremely bright, much to the delight of his mother (Alicia Witt), although his father (Chad Michael Murray) has more immediate concerns about his farmland and struggle to make ends meet. Oh, and Conner's parents (Larry The Cable Guy and Kathy Najimy) are about to visit.

Yes, that was me trying to be brief with the plot description there, but there's a lot more to mention. The character played by Chad Michael Murray spent many years bullying the character played by Eric Lively. The funding for the local festivities comes with a number of strings attached. There's a random Ku Klux Klan meeting gag. And so much more.

Although I have no other experience with this character, or these plays and movies, A Madea Christmas gives me the distinct impression that Tyler Perry likes to stir plenty into the pot, all the while having his female creation ready to take centre stage whenever necessary. She doesn't necessarily solve any, or all, problems but she enables others to find their own solutions. And she does this by cutting through any bullshit, in between scenes that have her either throwing her weight around and cussing or spouting some tiresome homely wisdom.

The acting ranges from soap opera levels (Murray and Horsford can't overcome the poor writing) to the genuinely good (Perry, despite the broad comedy of the character he plays, is great in the lead role, and other very good turns come from Sumpter, Lively, Mr Cable Guy, Najimy, and Witt), and the direction is solid, if deliberately leaving aside any flash and sizzle in favour of simple camerawork and scene set-ups.

The big problem here is the script, veering between comedy to earnest drama back to comedy again like some drunk driver heading along an empty four-lane stretch of highway while searching for the packet of cigarettes he just dropped under his seat. One or two moments work while mixing the two - particularly a revelation and clearing of the air scene in the third act - but most make you feel as if you're watching two different movies that were dropped en route to the editing department and then just spliced together into one ill-judged hybrid.

So there you go. Feel free to take this review with a pinch of salt. And whenever I see my next Madea movie I can find out if my initial impressions were correct, or if her character is better suited to some of the other adventures that Tyler Perry has created for her.

5/10

Here you go, my American friends, buy it here. We have a lot less available to us here in the UK, which may not be a bad thing.

Jingle All The Way 2 (2014)

Daniel Whitney seems to have done quite well for himself in the guise of Larry The Cable Guy, a character so popular that he gets credited with the roles that Whitney performs in most of his movie appearances. Because Whitney is actually playing Larry PLAYING whichever character he's been designated in whichever movie he's been chosen for.

So the biggest problem I had with Jingle All The Way 2 was Larry, the kind of comedy character created specifically to appeal to a large section of America. Some will identify with him, some will laugh AT him, and many will laugh WITH him. Yet he's not the kind of comic creation that we appreciate here in the UK. Not to my knowledge, anyway.

But here's the rub. The biggest problem is also the biggest plus point for the movie. When not going for the laughs, there's a big, albeit misguided at times, heart beating in the chest of that big ol' American boy. And that big heart, let me tell you now, helps this movie edge slightly ahead of the film that precedes it. Despite the very basic core element being the same, a father after the latest must-have toy for his child, this film does a better job of clarifying that it's actually about parental love as opposed to materialism.

Larry plays . . . . . . . . Larry, a dad who wants to treat his daughter (Noel, played by Kennedi Clements) how she deserves to be treated at Christmas. It's especially important this year, due to the fact that Noel now has a step-dad (Victor, played by Brian Stepanek) who can afford to buy her anything she might possibly want. Well, she seems to want a talking bear toy. Larry is determined to get her one. Upon hearing of this, however, Victor is equally determined to stop Larry from achieving this goal. And so begins a frustrating time for Larry as he resorts to increasingly desperate measures in order to get his hands on something that he thinks his daughter wants more than anything else in the world.

Whitney/Larry is good enough in the main role here. Okay, his humour isn't my thing, but the sweet centre is hard not to warm to, especially in the context of a Christmas movie. Clements is equally sweet, in fact a bit sweeter, as the little girl perplexed by the actions of the adults around her. Stepanek is given the role of bad guy, and plays his part well, while Eric Breker is his right hand man, the one charged with getting those toy bears cleared from every shelf, and he's suitably stealthy and shady, for the most part. Anthony Carelli (AKA Santino Marella), Kirsten Robek and Rachel Hayward, among others, also do just fine in their roles.

The script by Stephen Mazur (and some other uncredited contributors, apparently) is a bit clumsy and uneven, with a number of the gags not really playing out as well as they could, and a finale that feels a bit rushed, but the direction from Alex Zamm, and the constant work put in by that bloody character I also class as a major problem, is enough to keep the whole thing ticking over pleasantly enough.

It doesn't quite do enough for me to call it a good movie, but this is at least decent enough entertainment for anyone who saw the first movie and is also a fan of Larry The Cable Guy.

4/10

http://www.amazon.com/Jingle-All-Way-Larry-Cable/dp/B00OGT2UFE/ref=sr_1_3?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1418320059&sr=1-3&keywords=jingle+all+the+way

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