Cars, an Unexpectedly Great Movie
by Celia Bullwinkel
Being a non-driving New Yorker, I did not plan on Cars captivating my interest. It had plenty of time to try, with the running time of 116 minutes. Admittedly, I had an emotional attachment to the cars I had once driven (some ten years ago), but I was doubtful that Pixar could make me feel for a machine. After the giddy joyride of the Incredibles, would Cars be a hit or a lemon?
After viewing the film at New York’s Ziegfeld, I can honestly conclude: Cars is no lemon. I enjoyed the film better than I imagined. It deserves no comparison to any other Pixar film, it’s THAT good. Fans will notice the absence of Randy Newman’s singing, another Joe Ranft cameo, and a collection of pop songs (thankfully, it’s done well). While the film is centered on car racing, Cars has a slower pace to its previous films, partly due to Lasseter’s storytelling sensibility. His style comes on strong delivering smart humor, and heart. But that doesn’t mean the film crawls by. On the contrary, the film opens in an unexpected way, by jumping into a fast-paced, loud, vividly colored race arena, teaming with thousands of cars, and not one human in site. The Cars universe pulls itself together during main character’s big race, and then the story takes off! (Read the article)
