Tag Archive

Director: Brian Fee
Release date: March 28, 2017
Rating: ★★★
Review:

‘Cars’ was the first Pixar film after Toy Story to get a sequel in 2011. Unfortunately, ‘Cars 2’ was as much as a digression from the original narrative as it was disappointing. With ‘Cars 3’ the studio returned to the original source material, once again focusing on Lightning McQueen.

The film takes a brave step in showing the effects of getting older and realizing that you’re not young anymore, and thus is a film more appealing to parents than to youngsters. The whole idea of characters getting older is a bold one in animation land, and the film does a good job in the depiction of passing the torch from one generation to a new one.

Unfortunately, Lightning McQueen never was a wholly sympathetic character, and he certainly isn’t in this film. When his reign on the racetrack is threatened by a new generation of rookies, he desperately tries to stay in place. But his reckless and selfish behavior leads to disaster, and when he’s offered a training program, he’s too impatient and too self-centered to follow the rules, wrecking some expensive equipment and putting his younger trainer into danger.

In fact, this trainer, the female car Cruz Ramirez (wonderfully voiced by Cristela Alonzo), by far is the most interesting character of the movie. She’s apparently from a humbler background and shows McQueen that some people must struggle hard to achieve the confidence and success he took for granted. But the film is not her story, and this important message is pushed aside by McQueen’s struggle with his own ageing and mortality.

In this, the film relies heavily on McQueen’s relation to his own mentor, Doc Hudson. This character was voiced by Paul Newman, who passed away in 2008, so his dialogue comes from unused recordings for the first film. This mentor-theme is pushed rather forcefully and heavy-handedly into the story, with a series of flashbacks in which McQueen realizes how he has mistreated Cruz as a low point of stating the obvious.

Moreover, for a large part the film blindly follows the rules of the sports film, with an unlikely outsider winning from the established and unsympathetic competitor thanks to an unconventional training scheme. This training part, under the auspices of Smokey, Doc Hudson’s former partner, is by far the weakest part of the film. This cliché path fills most of the second part of the film, hampering a story that could have been more daring and more original.

The characters from the first film are hardly present in ‘Cars 3’. Even Mater’s role is surprisingly modest, considering he was the leading character of ‘Cars 2’. Especially disappointing is the role of Sally, McQueen’s girlfriend. In fact, McQueen hardly behaves as if he were in a relationship, at all. There’s no conflict at all between him and Sally when he goes training at the other side of the continent, nor when he sees the younger woman Cruz more than he sees her. This somehow feels like a missed opportunity.

Meanwhile, the effect animation, the background art, the scene setting, and lighting are all of the highest quality. The world building of ‘Cars 3’ feels so effortlessly, one can focus on the characters and forget how well it is done. In fact, the character animation of the cars themselves remain the weakest element of the animation, as the car-living-being-combination remains a bit uncanny and unconvincing, with those large continuous eyes filling the front window, and those odd mouths in the bumper regions.

‘Cars 3’ pleasantly rounds up McQueen’s story, from an all too hasty rookie in ‘Cars’ to a veteran who realizes his days are over, but who manages to pass his knowledge to a new generation. I certainly hope Pixar does not make the same mistake as with ‘Toy Story’ and leaves the franchise with a perfect ending after three films.

Watch the trailer for ‘Cars 3’ yourself and tell me what you think: