Pixar has set such high standards for itself that it seems a disappointment that Cars is only a very good movie, and not a brilliant one.
The story is familiar: A young hotshot from the city is stranded in a small town that's seen better days. From him, the town learns to take pride in itself and takes the first steps towards a general sprucing up; from the town, he learns that old-fashioned values and friendship are more important than money and fame. It's a common movie plot -- Doc Hollywood and Sweet Home Alabama come to mind -- and Cars does it reasonably well.
The hotshot this time is Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson), a rookie racecar on the Piston Cup circuit; he's on his way to California for the championship race when he gets stuck in Radiator Springs ("the cutest little town in Carburetor County"). There's a wise old mentor car, Doc Hudson (Paul Newman); a pretty girl to flirt with, Sally Carrera (Bonnie Hunt); and a local yokel to serve as best friend, Mater the tow truck (an extremely annoying Larry the Cable Guy).
And in Pixar tradition, there's an ensemble of supporting cars; there's Cheech Marin as the Latino lowrider who enters every scene with a different flashy paint job; George Carlin as the VW bus who's into Hendrix and organic fuel; Paul Dooley as Sarge, the jeep; Tony Shalhoub as Luigi, the Italian sportscar. They're a bunch of rather cliched types, but within the limits of those cliches, some of the performances are good; Shalhoub is the standout, stealing every scene he's in.
There are some nice touches in the animation; the use of windshield wipers as eyebrows is effective, and I love the way that the hippie van's license plate hangs from its front bumper like a goatee. The movie's biggest problem is that as hard as the animators have worked, cars just aren't capable of being very physically expressive. They've got no limbs and their front ends don't allow for much facial expression. So the voice performances have to provide even more energy and expression than usual for an animated film, and the principals here don't bring quite enough life to their characters.
Cars is the least of the Pixar films to date, but even with its unexpressive characters and familiar story, it's still a moderately entertaining movie, and better than most of the family films we get these days.
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