As Pixar descend into the unnecessary sequel trap, this follow-up to the technically brilliant but generally underwhelming Cars sees Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and his guileless friend Tow Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) race around London, trying to defeat a mysterious villain. As kid’s car films go, it’s shamelessly coasting in neutral.
Which is actually an impressive achievement, given the seriously bumpy road of the innately flawed Cars universe. The characters are vehicles, yet the world is one decidedly built for humans, with buildings and toilets and passenger seats – for whom? The variety of the characters’ expressions is also severely limited, so the animators rely heavily on stereotype. A beaten-up hillbilly truck here, a smarmy French racecar there, a stoner VW bus in the background, and a lot of cliché overload-induced eye-rolling in the audience.
And from the sounds of the lazy voice performances, perhaps some eye-rolling was going on among the actors too. “Comedian” Larry the Cable Guy chews up his lead role as Tow Mater before ejecting it into a spittoon (which given the irritating nature of the character isn’t necessarily a compliment), but Owen Wilson, Emily Mortimer and even Eddie Izzard fail to emote anything resembling personality. But isn’t it nice to see Michael Caine working for a change? Ahem.
There are some fine jokes in Cars 2 and the visuals provide a fun and colourful ride, but this is essentially a second-rate film about a second-rate character that no adult would ever watch alone; no child would ever care about, and no viewer will remember the week after without deep hypnotherapy. Which may be fine for a Saturday afternoon distraction, but this film is from Pixar. The studio that brought us Up, WALL-E and Toy Story 3. And that makes Cars 2 endlessly disappointing. Because when you expect good, honest, nourishing, heartwarming soul food, cheap Drive-Thru just won’t do.