cars 2...of solace

Took my 3 year old to see Cars 2 on Saturday. There is something magical about the very first show on a Saturday morning...there is NO ONE at the theater. There were two other small families there. It was awesome.

Sooooo the movie. There's been a lot of talk, and since there's a tiny piece of me that has always aspired to be a film critic, here I go setting the record straight.

Cars 2 is NOT a Pixar movie. Nor is it a Disney movie.

Cars 2 is a Bond movie. With cars instead of people. That is the only difference.

Now, to be clear – I don't mean this in a make-fun-of-how-dumb-it-was kind of way. I just mean that if you go in expecting a Disney/Pixar film, characterized by adventure, whimsy, and intimate character development, you are going to be less than thrilled with Cars 2.

However, if you go in expecting a Bond movie – with lots of gunfights, British accents, worldwide locales, and dastardly conspiracies – then you might just have a ton of fun with this movie.

I'm not kidding! Cars 2 has everything that a Bond movie would have – right down to shadowy villians with accents, spy cars with secret weaponry, global conspiracies, even Bond music in the end credits (no joke).

The movie is centered around Lightning McQueen and Mater going off to see the world in a series of international races. Lightning McQueen and the other characters from Cars 1 aren't overwhelmingly present for most of the movie, however – the bulk of the action revolves around Mater getting caught up in the spy side of things. The two new characters, voiced by Michael Caine and Emily Mortimer, have far more grill-time than any of the Radiator Springs crew.

That being said, the movie was actually a lot of fun. I didn't think there was as much Mater-humor as some reviews indicated; there was just a lot of Mater.

Some of the action sequences were a little too scary for my 3 year old, especially one sequence when Mater accidentally shoots up the bad guys with his secret gatling guns. (Did that sentence just feel totally wrong? I'm telling you – it's a Bond movie)

The main thing to take away is that your expectations going into a movie absolutely determine your experience. The best thing to do is to go in with no expectations, and make your decisions as you experience it, reserving final judgment until the end.

So Cars 2 –

As a Pixar movie, I'd give it 2 stars out of 5.

But as a Bond movie, I'd give it 5 out of 5!

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Additional notes, if you've already seen it (a few very small spoilers) – highlight to read:

1. Holly Shiftwell. Although honestly not that annoying, this character bugged me for a few reasons.

- First, all I could hear was Sophie from Howl's Moving Castle (both voiced by Emily Mortimer).

- Second, her name totally reminds me of Sally Sitwell from Arrested Development, whose story arc includes a burning car, something we see a lot of in Cars 2.

- Third, wouldn't a techy desk agent be a more conservative car, like maybe a Prius? That she was a glittery, hot pink babe-car seemed out of place (again, it's a Bond movie)

2. Violent car deaths. This is something that has always kind of bugged me about Pixar movies, actually, although I'm sure I'm one of the few. In the back of my mind, I always ask, "What if this movie was about people, instead of [cars, fish, toys, etc]?"

That being said, I was a little alarmed at the number of violent car deaths in Cars 2. One spy car is crushed up into a Wall-E-esque cube. A bad guy car falls to his death from the oil rig and his parts splatter across the water. Several other cars are exploded from the inside-out as a result of the villian's evil TV camera (did you catch that in the Italy race? Those cars died...).

I'm sure I'm the only one thinking all metaphorically like this, but still...I was a bit shocked!

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