It seems impossible for Pixar to make a bad movie. Cars may not prove as memorable as Toy Story, Toy Story 2, The Incredibles, or Finding Nemo -- Pixar has set standards that are difficult to equal, even for themselves -- but it is an enjoyable film that shows enough flashes of the Pixar brilliance to be well worth seeing.

The Pixar team possesses an uncanny ability to make fish, insects, and inanimate objects very human. Cars is a departure from the four movies mentioned above in that it has not a single human character. Every character is some type of automobile -- even the insects, which have tiny, winged car bodies. Unlike the adorable Chevron cars of some years back, whose eyes were their headlights, the Pixar cars have their eyes on the windshields. Perhaps this was done to avoid litigation; there are many other similarities to the Chevron models. Information on the inevitable deluxe DVD edition will probably tell us all about that.

The hero of this opus is a young sports car, Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson), who dreams of winning the Piston Cup, America’s top racing award. On the way to the final race, he runs afoul of the law in the town of Radiator Springs, naturally located in Carburetor County. The population of that small town includes Doc Hudson (Paul Newman, himself a driver), an old-timer who years ago knew the thrill of the race track himself; an antiquated tow truck, Mater, short for Tow-Mater (Larry The Cable Guy); Sally, a foxy Porsche (Bonnie Hunt); a hippie Volkswagen bus (George Carlin); and Luigi (Tony Shalhoub), who owns a down-and-out tire store.

Sentenced to haul an asphalt machine and repave the broken-down main street, Lightning is disgruntled for a few days, but then begins to warm to the town, and especially to Sally. That’s when the big message moves in: The good old days really were better and ought to be reclaimed. This truth is delivered in a tribute to Route 66, the fabled highway, which ran through Radiator Springs before the Interstate allowed everyone to pass the town by.

Cars is chock full of in jokes, tributes, and cameo appearances. Ray and Tom Magliozzi, aka Click’n’Clack of NPR’s Car Talk, have five seconds ("Don’t drive like my brother." "Don’t drive like my brother."). Several racecars are voiced by racing celebrities. Some of the tributes are obvious -- the Goodyear blimp has become the Light Year blimp, in tribute to a lead character from another Pixar film -- but the clever road signs, shop signs, and license plates come so thick and fast that I won’t get all the jokes until the DVD comes out and I can still-frame them.

Then there are the cows. In Radiator Springs, these are tractors, and one of the funniest scenes involves Mater taking Lightning out for a spate of cow tipping. Later, the tractors stampede through the city streets in a nod to a whole herd of Westerns. And don’t leave until the end of the closing credits or you’ll miss some of the best stuff: cars acting out scenes from other Pixar classics.

By now, Pixar can do anything it wants with CGI animation. Many scenes look like the real thing, only animated. The use of shadow and light makes the movie look more three-dimensional than most animated films, with careful attention to every detail. Randy Newman’s orchestral score is adequate, and many pop and country artists are incorporated into the mix. The Dolby Digital 5.1 surround mix is exemplary and adds a lot to the excitement and fun.

Cars is entertaining. Don’t expect another Toy Story and you’ll have lots of fun watching it.

• Go Back