Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Cars (2 1/2 Stars - 4 Stars)



            Handling Pixar's first rotten tomato is like finding your first acne. After finding that small glitch, you start hoping that it doesn't continue and pray to god that it's just a mistake. As human nature, we make mistakes and are trained to fix it. Hopefully I'm right about this because I'm in the denial process right now and I don't want it to transition into aggression.

            The fact of the matter is, Cars 2 is the worst Pixar movie to date, and that's pretty harsh considering that Pixar was consecutively the one film company that was consistent with raking in money while at the same time, making wonderful movies. That's why, when rating any Pixar movie, I judge it with high expectations. If Pixar releases a movie that's average looking, then I would become disappointed in it. Cars 2, on the other hand was slightly below average to me, and because of that, I hope that it stays as the worst Pixar movie of all time.

            I did like the fact that this movie was faster than its previous movie. In this movie, there is a James bond like plot that involves a mastermind scheme that'll eventually resolve itself at the end of the movie. I will say though that the scheme with the Alinoll bio fuel, the Lemon cars, and Professor Z trying to get rid of the World Grand Prix racecars was indeed smart. For an action movie, it was pretty smart and became a good guessing game for a while until it got too predictable. They practically gave away the ending at one point in the film. Is this what Pixar has come to? Has Pixar stopped taking risks and decided to stick with conventions like the cliché Bond type film?

            Because of being faster instead of living the slow life, we sacrifice the fundamental attribute of relating a character. The whole premise felt like a joke to me and it pains me to see that thousands of heads collaborated on this. The movie shifts its focus on Mater, the tow truck, more than Lightning McQueen. This was my first problem because Mater is a comic relief, and if one makes a comic relief the main character, and then the movie will not be taken seriously. Pixar has come up with a huge array of protagonists that stays ingrained in our memories. I never had a problem with switching the main characters, being that they did the same thing in Toy Story 2, but if the main character is nothing but a buffoon for a bulk of the movie, then there will be problems.

               Lightning and Mater's friendship doesn't fit well in with me. Why should Lightning be friends with Mater again after what he did? Was it because of a gut feeling? Also, we see that Mater's fundamental flaw is that he can't be normal; however, at the end of the movie, we never really resolved this problem. Should he learn to a better car, or be the same idiot as he is? Or should he learn in being different in a different scenario when possible? Can we change human nature or can't we? The morality is blurred in this movie, whereas the first Cars was very fine and clear.

            My problem with the first movie stems with how there are so much characters that it seemed impossible to relate to all of them. In conclusion, they were there to sell some toys. I guess that they are doing the same approach in this movie where the more characters on the screen will pay off on the toy shelves, especially now that there are ships and planes in this movie as well.

            Most of the Pixar endings have a great way of tying up every story, plot, and character conflicts into a neat bow. Sometimes, these endings can be really brief and some don't even need words to explain the ending to us. In this movie, there is a lag ending, never knowing when the movie is going to end.

            Lastly, the reason why it's the worst Pixar movie was because of the audience's reaction in the theater. There are some that makes us laugh, and some that makes us cry. Even though these movies are from Disney, they show some of the darkest things in animation history, making us dread at tension filled moments. In Cars 2, there was nothing. The entire audience was silent, except during the Pixar short that shown in the beginning. There were some comedic touches at times, but in general, my biggest criticism towards this movie is about how I felt nothing, as if I lost my soul and found no way of enjoying the pleasures of life. 

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