...Huh, I really doubt I've been regularly reviewing animation like I said I would. Heck, my first official review for this series was waaay back in January for Total Drama All-Stars. Now I've decided to review a movie I've watched so many times due to my younger brother. It's the 2006 Pixar movie Cars.
My little brother loved this movie, been watching since it first came out when he was around two. I watched it too and found it okay. But then when Cars 2 came out, I didn't like it but my brother did. In fact, now he hates the original movie which honestly gets on my nerves.
Then...as I grew up more, I started to notice some people didn't like Cars and voiced their reasons as to why they didn't like it (the Nostalgia Critic mainly). Mostly to do with the story, characters, and logic of the movie. After that, it tainted my opinion of the movie series. So what inspired me to write this review? Well...yesterday we saw the movie in one of my classes (okay, it was around the final half hour of the movie when I came in), and watched it and I thought to myself 'Hmm...maybe I should voice my own opinion of it.'So yeah...this is arguably one of the more weaker of the Pixar movies (mainly in the eyes of the adult viewers/fans), but then again, Pixar had yet to have movies that didn't do very well (I think it's sequel was the first to get that dishonor). Anyway, so the film is about a racecar named Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson), who ties in a race for the Piston Cup alongside the King (Richard Petty)
and Chick Hicks (Michael Keaton). This means another race will have to be done between the three cars as to who will take the Piston Cup, but on the way to California for the race, Lightning gets separated from his super-liner Mack (voiced by Pixar voice veteran John Ratzenberger) and ends up on Route 66. In panic, Lightning accidentally ruins the pavement on the main road in Radiator Springs, getting him arrested. Radiator Springs' judge, Doc Hudson (Peter Newman), originally plans to make him leave town right away but local lawyer Sally (Bonnie Hunt) insists that Lightning should do community service by fixing their road. Of course, Lightning wants nothing more than to get to California in time for the race and his attempt at fixing the road was too rushed, so he has to do it again. But as time goes on, Lightning starts to get closer to the fellow cars in Radiator Springs, with having romantic feelings for Sally, spends a lot of time with Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), and becomes rather interested with Doc Hudson and his past. Heck, when the media finds him and brings him to California, Lightning shows hesitation about leaving and his time in the long run made him a better car...person. 
The story in itself you kinda know what'll happen, it's been done before and there's not really anything different new or fresh to it other than that all living things are replaced with vehicles of some sort. The characters are...okay, but I don't think they bring anything new. They do have character, Lightning does get development and all that.
But my biggest problem is probably the logic that everything that lives IS a vehicle. There's no humans or anything, so how in the world does the logic work? Were the living cars originally created by people that likely died out in some sort of apocalypse long ago, leaving cars as the dominant life form or what? Wouldn't a lot of the car jokes confuse a lot of people? And HOW do they reproduce for that matter?
It just...doesn't make sense to me at all. I get it's a cartoon so I might be overanalyzing, but it has to make some sort of sense.The animation is kinda nice, but it's Pixar, they've always made pretty good animation, but here it's okay. I do like that they dedicated this movie to the late Joe Ranft, who co-directed the movie with John Lasseter (he also was Red the firetruck). This was the last movie he worked on before his unfortunate death in a car crash, and he was responsible in helping create many good animated movies by Disney and Pixar since the 80s. It's very tragic such a great person had to leave that way and he shall be missed greatly...
I know they made a TON of toys for the franchise and I'm sure they still do, my brother got a lot of figurines and other forms of merchandise from this. It spawned a few videogames, a series of shorts about Mater's misadventures/tall tales, a sequel, and a spinoff to boot. I even heard they're gonna make ANOTHER sequel for Cars, even the spinoff Planes will get one too. Though I think they're kinda unnecessary since the second movie and Planes were classified by many as Pixar's biggest disappointments so I doubt I have high hopes for them.
Overall, Cars in itself is decent at best, probably not the best thing to come out of Pixar but it's okay enough for just about any age group to find something to enjoy. It does have charm and a good moral too so it's doing it's job telling the story okay. I do have a bit of an issue with it's logic like I said before, and there's nothing really fresh to it. Not really a favorite of mine, but it's fine enough for me to watch.
