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The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett's Journal - Cars 2: The Spoilerish Review

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June 24th, 2011

06:35 pm

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Cars 2: The Spoilerish Review
I can tell you one thing about Cars 2 that will tell you instantly whether you'll like it or not:

Cars 2 is Tow Mater fanfic. Where Mater is the biggest Mary Sue in the history of Suedom.

Now, that's going to be bad for a lot of people, since Larry the Cable Guy's rendition of Tow Mater as the countrified, well-meaning, boorish good-ol'-boy wasn't for everyone, not even in the original Cars. But in the sequel, Tow Mater's character arc consists of "Gosh, Tow Mater sure is a great guy" to "Tow Mater is even more awesome," with a brief skimming over "maybe Tow Mater isn't as awesome as he thinks he is!" before it's solved by a healthy does of "Tow Mater, your problem is that you're just not being enough Tow Mater!"

The problem with Tow Mater is that he's clueless. And it's very hard to be emotionally invested in a character who literally has no idea what's going on - especially in what is, ostensibly, an action film. He spends the first half of the movie bumbling about, not even realizing he is a spy or what he's fighting for - you remember how much everyone loved Jar-Jar Binks? Well, here's Mater in a rust-covered Hee-Haw outfit, doing the Binks. And while it's arguably fun to watch if you're a kid, you don't really feel bad for Tow Mater beyond a certain surface "awww" when he makes the sad-face.

This actually winds up giving a rather wretched lesson for the kids. The final lesson for Tow Mater is that he just needs to be proud of all his quirks. And the final lesson for Lightning McQueen is that he's a douche for telling Tow Mater to go away after Tow's goaded him into a race, embarrassed him in front of a crowd, blurted out to Lightning's worst enemy that McQueen's girlfriend has a total crush on him, and then won't shut up over an open communication line and actually loses McQueen the race that Mater got him involved in.

Check this: Lightning's the one who needs to apologize.

In short, Tow Mater's self-involved and clumsy, hurting those around him. Yet the lesson of this movie is not, perhaps, that Tow Mater needs to fucking listen when people are trying to warn him about something, but rather that his friends should learn to deal with him. Can you tell the Pixar kids are nerds? Because the lesson is that no matter how personally hurtful or inconsiderate your best friend is, you should celebrate his oafishness because man, it'd be just mean to tell a guy who's continually farting around your friends that maybe he should bathe.

And in the end, Tow Mater is faster than Lightning McQueen, has a hotter girlfriend, is a super-spy, and beloved by the whole world. I'm not kidding. Tow Marysue. So if you thought Tow Mater was the hottest thing on wheels, well, here's a buckshot load of butt-humor for you.

The shame is that the movie flirts with the lesson that Tow Mater needs to learn - there's a dream sequence which isn't so much a dream sequence as Tow Mater reliving scenes that we saw earlier in the film. For a moment, it looks as though Tow Mater might have the realization that people don't take him seriously because he ignores what they're saying and rushes to conclusions. But in the end, the lesson is that Tow Mater needs to rely upon his instincts, foisted on us by his unfoiling of a ridiculously elaborate oil-swindling scheme that frankly, I didn't buy.

Now, there are a ton of other issues with Cars 2, mainly in the emotional connection. Cars was arguably the weakest of the Pixar films from an emotional standpoint, because the entire climax of the movie hinged upon Lightning McQueen leaving town to go to the race! Oh my God! Except Lightning could, you know, go back to town after he won the race - which is (spoilers!) precisely what he did. Or bring his friends from town to the race, which is kind of what happened. So the Cars series has a history of not-really-emotionally involving storylines, but they're simple enough for kids to follow.

Cars 2, however, feels half-baked. There are all these races, but there's nothing really at stake beyond a little pride - even Lightning McQueen didn't want to be involved until Tow Mater was angry about it. Pixar's been the genius thus far of having scenes carry out two, three, even four purposes at once, cramming emotion and action and information into these spectacularly tightly-written gems... But Cars 2 has a number of nothing-but-exposition scenes where the plot is advanced by three cars talking at each other, explaining the next move in the spy game. It's just dry and dull, sometimes.

Cars 2 is not a bad movie. Rated without the outrage of "This is a Pixar film and I expected better!", it's a 72% - a gentleman's C. If Dreamworks had put it out, it'd be a forgettable Dreamworks movie. As it is, what we have is the first major stumble in Pixar history - and I went because I wanted to be proven wrong. I wasn't to believe. But I couldn't. Alas.

This entry has also been posted at http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/121456.html. You can comment here, or comment there; makes no never-mind by me.

(28 shouts of denial | Tell me I'm full of it)

Comments

From:	jadasc
Date:	June 24th, 2011 10:51 pm (UTC)

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... so it's a rotten tow-mater?

(Reply) (Thread)

From:	theferrett
Date:	June 24th, 2011 10:53 pm (UTC)

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You said it, not me.