Susskins Central Dispatch

Fred and I just got back from seeing Cars.

I loved it.

First, a bit of backstory. I have loved every feature film made by Pixar. I have a slavish, fanatical devotion to their films. I consider them the premiere source for movies. If you put a rack of new unseen films in front of me, each one made by a master director, I would first go to the Pixar film. I’d probably watch it twice before I touched any others in the rack.

That said, Cars is visually stunning, even by Pixar standards. The story is not original, the plot is nothing you haven’t seen before. Even the premise of talking cars has been done by others. But the plot is clear, polished, and well executed. The characters are distinct archtypes without seeming overly-stereotypical. The action is thought-out and fun. And the whole thing is wrapped up in the most breathtaking artwork that Pixar has ever created.

This movie is HUGE. I mean really huge. Grand Canyon huge. The scale of this movie is bigger than anything they’ve ever done. Each previous movie has led up to this. Each movie involved a bigger set than the last. None of them have incorporated such astounding panorama views as this one has. During the racing scenes, you are in a massive stadium, and you can feel the size of it.

John Lasseter (one of the directors) had stated that the racing scenes brought their render farm to its knees. I can see why. Man alive. Detail for miles. I don’t mean that in a metaphorical sense either. Detail for MILES. For real.

Another thing I loved is that the voices for the most part are anonymous. There were a couple that I knew, the most prominent of which is Larry the Cable Guy as Mater. But the others are all “Flo”, not “FAMOUS ACTRESS as Flo”. I appreciated that. I’m not a fan of stunt casting, though that’s been a fixture of animation since the early days of Disney. I’m fine with it to a large extent, but it’s nice to find a movie that I’m not taken out of because I keep going, “hey, that’s Cheech Marin!” Yes, Cheech is in this movie. He’s your go-to guy for comic Hispanic characters. Who else is going to do a low-rider?

The movie is also nicely dedicated to Joe Ranft, a long-time Pixar writer/director/actor who died last year in a tragic car crash. If you’ve seen the other Pixar movies, you’ve heard Joe’s voice. He’s most famously known for Heimlich the caterpillar in A Bug’s Life, and for Wheezy the penguin in Toy Story 2.

There are lots of interesting mini scenes through the credits. They’ve moved on from the bloopers that they used to do. This time they did little glimpses of life in Radiator Springs afterwards. Really well done. Also included are three mini-reworks of older Pixar movies into car-themed versions, complete with the proper voices and a scathing denunciation of the overuse of John Ratzenberger by John Ratzenberger.

There’s also a quick scene after the credits are done. Nothing important, but an amusing little piece of dessert after the movie.

Pixar is still the King of Animation. It’s not hard to figure out why all the other film companies are blurting out CG animated features. A shame that they don’t lavish the same attention and talent on them that Pixar does on its films. This, for instance, seems to be the year of CG animals. Three films out already this year (Ice Age: The Meltdown, The Wild, and Over the Hedge,) and at least two more to go (The Ant Bully, and Barnyard.) Another one (the name of which escapes me) is coming next year. But they need more than animated porcupines to get butts in the seats. They may want to look a bit closer at why Pixar is so damned good at what they do.

Pixar is so good at what they do that I now want to take a road trip. Much to Fred’s dismay.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 13th, 2006 at 8:39 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.