One sweet ride

‘Cars,’ Pixar’s latest CG ’toon, is a charming tale of an egotistical speed racer stranded in a sleepy town that time forgot

By Soren Andersen, For the Northwest Guardian

They call it “Cars,” and they’re not kidding.

The people at Pixar went all out to make their newest ’toon an all-auto extravaganza. There’s not a human in sight no matter where you look in this candy-colored tale of an egotistical speed racer named Lightning McQueen who learns to care about his fellow vehicles when he gets sidetracked and stranded in a slow-moving Podunk of a place far off the beaten track in the desert Southwest.

The fans in the stands of the NASCAR-style auto race that opens the movie? Horn-honking, door-waving cars.

The residents of Podunkville? (Actually, it’s called Radiator Springs.) Autos, every last one.

Even the bugs buzzing about in the desert are, you guessed it, itty bitty VW bugs with whirring wings.

The landscape, too, is embodied with the motorized motif. The buried tailfin Caddies of Texas’ famous Cadillac Ranch are echoed by a mountain range looming in the distance, and hood-ornament outcroppings and fenderlike buttes abound.

It’s clever. It’s precious. And in the early going, it’s all just a little too much.

Too much noise and zooming in the very beginning, as those Pixar wizards create a CG-powered race full of roaring engines, high-banked asphalt and howling crowds. The picture’s appeal to the ever-growing NASCAR demographic couldn’t be more blatant.

And the longer the sequence goes on, and it goes way too long, the more you get a feeling that the only thing going on here is marketing for the inevitable “Cars” toys and knickknacks. (In stores now!)

But then, just as you’re resigning yourself to the notion that “Cars” is nothing but an extended commercial for Stuff, it leaves the speedway, downshifts from soulless sales mode and slowly finds its bearings in the little town that time forgot. That’s when the magic that sets Pixar productions apart from other studios’ animated offerings kicks in. That’s when “Cars,” paradoxically, becomes human.

John Lasseter, the creative genius behind all of Pixar’s hit computer-generated movies and the director of four of them – both “Toy Story” pictures, “A Bug’s Life” and now “Cars,” which he co-directed with the late Joe Ranft – has a gift for creating endearing characters.

Lightning, voiced by Owen Wilson, isn’t very likable at first, being a whiny prima donna. But befriended by a goofily gregarious rust-bucket pickup, speaking in the ole-boy cadences of Larry the Cable Guy; mentored by a gruff-voiced classic 1951 Hudson Hornet, voiced by that venerated Hollywood classic Paul Newman; and romanced by a sweet-natured Porsche 911 voiced by Bonnie Hunt, Lightning has a change of heart, er, or whatever the nuts-and-bolts equivalent is in a talking car.

Radiator Springs is located on one of the less-traveled stretches of Route 66, and Lasseter turns the town, with its drive-in diner, Flo’s V-8 Café, and its Cozy Cone motor court motel, into a loving valentine to all the hamlets that went to seed after the freeways came and the traffic on that ribbon of two-lane blacktop went away. The nostalgia is gently ladled on, and it gives “Cars” a sweet, comforting taste.

Once here, you’ll be happy to stay a spell.