Poignant plot puts Cars sequel in pole position
Cars 3 U cert, 109 min
Dir Brian Fee Starring Owen Wilson, Cristela Alonzo, Armie Hammer, Chris Cooper, Nathan Fillion, Bonnie Hunt, Larry the Cable Guy (voices)
Insofar as it’s possible to feel sorry for a $600 million-grossing, corporately produced children’s entertainment franchise which has accrued a further $10 billion-plus in merchandise sales worldwide to date, and is about sentient vehicles, can’t you feel just a little twinge of pity for Cars? The ongoing adventures of Lightning Mcqueen are often held up as the shabbiest thread in the otherwise lustrous Pixar tapestry: too corny, too cute, no conceptual muscle or mind-spinning subtext, set on an inexplicable and chilling humanless alternative Earth, and so on.
Whether the first Cars (2006) really deserved that reproof in the first place is arguable: the flaws in any film tend to show up after the 1,000th viewing, which many parents found themselves chalking up a week or so after the DVD came out. But there’s no question that the noisy, sugary Cars 2 (2011) was the first Pixar film you sensed could have easily come from another studio. And that means this new instalment begins at the back of the grid.
And things get trickier right away, thanks to an exquisite sixminute short called Lou that screens before Cars 3 in cinemas. It’s about the contents of a playground lost property box that come alive – it’s ingeniously animated and almost instantly moving.
Nothing in Cars 3 can quite equal it, although Brian Fee’s film often comes surprisingly close: both in terms of graphical innovation and its plot, which blossoms into something more profound than the Rocky sequelesque comeback yarn you initially expect. Distressingly, the old-timer is Lightning Mcqueen (Owen Wilson) himself: now a fading champion of the racing circuit, he’s bustled back to boot camp by the younger models snapping at his wheels.
After humiliating himself at his sponsor’s training facility, Lightning makes for the American backwoods with Cruz Ramirez (Cristela Alonzo), a peppy, bright yellow personal trainer who embraces the challenge of restoring Lightning’s ailing chassis to full match fitness. (For the avoidance of doubt, Cruz is also a car.) The empty beaches and tumbledown speedways that serve as Lightning’s practice ground are rendered in a wispy photorealistic style that’s almost indistinguishable from real life – and against those backdrops, the cars themselves somehow look even brighter, cartoonier, more expressively Crayola-doodled.
These landscapes have an emotional undertow, too: they’re where Lightning’s late mentor, Doc Hudson, once trained.
The suave old sedan was originally voiced by Paul Newman in his last film role, and some old recordings allow him to make an encore appearance in flashback. It’s here that Cars 3 modulates into a touching contemplation of legacies, passed torches and lives well-lived. RC