Cars 3 facing mid-life crisis
Cars 3 is sometimes charming, but has friends stuck in second gear
One of the consistent wonders of Pixar movies is how they’re able to connect with kids and grown-ups alike. Nowhere is this more true than in the Toy Story franchise — three movies with a fourth I can’t wait for, due out in 2019 — which gives children the joy of seeing toys come to life, while adults can bliss out on nostalgia, and occasionally even shed a tear over it.
Unfortunately, nowhere is it less true than in the Cars franchise: Three movies and that’ll do, Pixar. The 2006 original was a cool tale about a stuck-up race car learning a little small-town wisdom that — surprise! — helped him out in the big race. The 2011 followup, a 007-ish story that might have been called Blinkered Mater, Tow Truck Spy, also holds the record as the worst-reviewed Pixar outing to date.
But Cars 3 might beat it in that race. Because for some reason the film’s seven writers — whom I like to imagine carpooling to work each day — decided that a good plot would be to have Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) face obsolescence and possible retirement. OK, so parents can relate, but kids not so much. And how is a race car supposed to handle a midlife crisis? He can hardly go out and buy a sports car. There are probably laws against that in the car universe.
McQueen realizes that a newer, faster breed of automobile, personified by Armie Hammer as Jackson Storm, is outpacing him on the track. In fact, he suffers a pretty horrific crash just trying to keep up. So he hooks up with a high-tech firm run by Sterling (Nathan Fillion), who promises to return him to fighting form through a regimen of training and virtual-reality racing — the latter feeling far too much like watching a video game play another video game.
Even at its inception, Cars was the most problematic of Pixar’s animated offering, driving some Internet commentators to distraction over issues like who built these cars, and why in a world without humans they would need things like door handles, windows and rearview mirrors. (And don’t get me started on the school bus in this one.)
Anyway, the little red race car is paired with a yellow trainer named Cruz Ramirez, voiced by comedian Cristela Alonzo. This effectively sidelines the characters of the tow truck (Larry the Cable Guy) and McQueen’s best friend Sally (Bonnie Hunt), but what’s worse — dear God, I never thought I’d be writing this sentence — is that the two cars have almost zero chemistry.
After somehow accidentally joining and surviving a demolition derby, McQueen and Cruz head out on the road in search of mentorship from an older generation of cars. Why not have him sit down with someone to discuss pension options and estate planning while he’s at it?
During his long, meandering journey to self-actualization, there’s actually a scene where he says: “I feel like I’m all out of ideas.” It’s Cars 3’s sound-bite moment. Pixar’s animated films remain at their best when the company gives free rein to creativity. Just because actual cars come off a conveyor belt doesn’t mean movies about them should feel like they do, too.
How is a race car supposed to handle a midlife crisis? He can hardly go out and buy a sports car. There are probably laws against that in the car universe.