Cars
Reviewed by Uncle Cliff (2007)

Are the Pixar movies no longer as appealing to teenagers and grown-ups as they obviously are to the kiddies, or have I just become the Pixar grinch? Were their early efforts ever really as brilliant or hilarious as I recall believing they were, or was I just still too much of a kid myself when I fell in love with them?

At this stage I see Pixar in terms of pre and post Finding Nemo. Nemo was the film that made me realise that for all the visual splendour, and despite the fact that the worst Pixar film is still light years ahead of any other kid’s flick, they are slowly losing some of their magic. Nemo, to me, was a straight-up kids film, and the first Pixar film that I did not give a single thought to snapping up on DVD or ever watching again. Then came The Incredibles, which was a rollicking adventure, sure, but again lacked the other level I had become used to Pixar implementing so effortlessly as in the Toy Story films.

Which brings us to Cars. Like Nemo I again found myself bored at the predictability and obviousness of it all. And I don’t know why, but I was assuming that this would be like ‘The Secret Life of Cars’, much the way Toy Story was with toys, A Bug’s Life was with bugs, and Monsters Inc was with, um, monsters. I wasn’t expecting a world populated by only cars, where even the bugs are little car-bugs, and cars go to racing events to watch other cars. I don’t know why they messed with their winning formula here, but for me that was the main reason that this was nothing more than a kinda-cute kids flick.

Here’s the order the Pixar films were released in:

Toy Story (1995)

A Bug’s Life (1998)

Toy Story 2 (1999)

Monsters, Inc. (2001)

Finding Nemo (2003)

The Incredibles (2004)

Cars (2006)

And here’s the Pixar films in order of my preference: