Posted: 6/9/2006 9:44:24 PM EDT
| Once again, Pixar did an awesome job. The story was good, and the animation was unbelievable. |
Just got home, excellent flick. Pixar is one of the few class acts left. Ka-CHOW! This was the first film my daughter ever sat all the way through. She's six and has PDD-NOS. Curious thing we learned tonight. She absolutely refuses to sit in the theater during the previews. I sat just outside with her. As soon as the Pixar short One Man Band started, she came in. She told us, "I don't like commercials." |
You could pretty much repeat that story a thousand times across America. It would break my heart to see that happen to a town I lived. The primary Route 66 advisor said that they wanted to stress that "the characters and places in this film really did exist." We liked it so much we saw it again today with my Mom. I strongly advise averyone with broadband access the video podcast section of the film's official website and check out the videos on Route 66. The one where they visit "The Big Texan" resturant is pretty funny. Cars Official Website |
"Back then you didn't go on the road to make great time. You went on the road to have a great time." - Sally |
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I loved this movie. Everything was good. Paul Newman was outstanding even if he was just a voice-over. I think it is funny how we now have a nostalgic feeling for pre-interstate travel, but at the time everyone was very excited about the interstates. I remember my grandmother telling us how nice it was because you didn't have to go through every small town speed trap and stoplights. |
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I was dunned into seeing the latest Product of beasts Disney and Pixar by a visiting relative who shall remain nameless and who is protected from eternal scorn only by my sense of filial duty. Ten minutes into this trite morality tale I actually made the conscious decision to sleep and I thereby got through the first hour more or less unperturbed despite the movie's overbearing loudness. Upon awakening and discovering to my dismay that the movie was not yet over, I faced the reality that I would have to endure the rest of the incredibly stupid story fully conscious. With time to put the experience in proper perspective, I now actively loathe everyone involved in "creating" this hollow, derivative, hackneyed, and contemptibly asinine waste of two hours. This includes all reviewers (and there are many) who have praised this soulless, computer-generated offal, this cinematic excrement of such extreme putrescence that its sole redeeming virtue is that it is not presented in Smell-o-vision. Let us examine the blurbs, which form a damning indictment of the state of popular movie criticism and perhaps of all of Western civilization: "Fueled with plenty of humor, action, heartfelt drama, and amazing new technical feats, Cars is high octane delight for moviegoes of all ages." – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone It is my fond hope that Peter Travers burns in Hell. "A work of American art as classic as it is modern." – Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weakly If by "art" Lisa means a bottomless pit of churning vomit, and if by "classic" she means a six-screenwriter shitfest of lame jokes, celebrity narcissism, and stupefyingly shallow characters, and if by "modern" she means the inept mixture of animation styles stirred by a legion of render nerds, then – SHE IS EXACTLY RIGHT. "No other outfit can match Pixar's knack for plucking heartstrings without tearing them off the frets." – Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News Oh, was I supposed to give a fuck about a character whose only remarkable feature was Owen Wilson's lazy (and incompetent) voice acting? Was I supposed to be moved by his dumbass realization that "winning isn't everything"? Was the ending, in which he "loses" but gets everything in the world he wants, supposed to be redemptive? Fuck you and your girlish metaphors, failure. "It achieves the near impossible, turning cars, trucks, tractors and farm harvesters into cute Disney characters whose fates you'll care about." – Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News Yes, it was a masterstroke to use anthopomorphic cars, even though this severely hindered the character animation and resulted in many clumsy attempts to mimic human mannerisms, which were of course all drawn from Disney stereotypes I literally yawned at. But who gives a fuck when you can hire a celebrity to do the shitty voice acting. "I found it really touching. I mean this is a worthy edition to the great Pixar library." – Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper Of course in an ironic way this is almost correct, except that the Pixar library is not great, but to the contrary claims this uselessly conventional critic, whose basis for fame (or notoriety) is that he is even more useless and conventional than Roger Ebert. (But don't worry, Richard, David Edelstein's reviews provide a floor of awfulness through which no human critic can ever penetrate.) Speaking of which… "It tells a bright and cheery story, and then has a little something profound lurking around the edges. In this case, it's a sense of loss." – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times Yes, the loss of two hours I'll never recover, you asshole. Two hours of charmless, witless drivel which never felt it was safe to stop insulting me. DID YOU JUST CLAIM THIS SHITTY CARTOON WAS PROFOUND?!? "The animation is stunningly rendered. But the story is always the critical element in Pixar movies, and Cars' story is heartfelt with a clear and unabashed moral." – Claudia Puig, USA Today The animation is stunning, alright. I was stunned at how it never even accidentally managed to do something interesting. "It's touching, it's funny, it offers cautions about the modern pace of life, and it depends on a sense of rural Americana for its soul." – Tom Long, Detroit News Oh, yes, the dense core of the movie's stupidity. The plot of Cars is that old standby about a fast lane hotshot who's full of himself getting stranded in the sticks and suddenly discovering that life here is more precious and wonderful, because people care about each other. Ever notice how these stories are always written by people who wouldn't live in the sticks under threat of torture? How they always indulge in the acrid self-pity of small towns resentful that modernity has left them behind? How the writers strain to prove that rural areas – in modern life deposits of dysgenic filth – are genuine and sensible places while cities are filled with mindless assholes? How if you wanted to create condescending pap for the drooling masses you could hardly top what is before you? And ever with that wistful eye defocused on a past that never was. Of course these filmmakers are people who don't really miss the past. They, like James Lileks, just miss the replica past. When the characters of the rural sand trap that the hero gets stuck in voice regret over how a new highway destroyed their livelihoods, they are essentially making the argument that because someone moved their dinner plate six inches to the left they must now starve to death. Moral: change of any kind is a threat to our way of life. But we are far from reality, deep into delusion. I already mentioned the six screenwriters who were apparently vital to this white knuckled hand job of a movie. No, you cannot do without six screenwriters if your goal is to create shit. Another familiar problem is the casting of celebrities whose talents have nothing to do with voice work. When will this idiotic practice end? The voice work in this film is at best undistinguished, at worst a narcissistic pageant of celebrity cameos. What is saddest about this state of affairs is that there are hundreds of talented voice actors who will never get recognition or even steady work while jackasses like Bob Costas or Click and Clack read from the page and collect a vanity check. Even the best known voice actors cannot find work in these loathsome Pixar vehicles – but that doesn't mean we can't let Dale Earnhardt Jr. mumble some lines into a mike (even though without heavy contextual hints no one will have a clue that that's who it is). Computer animation once again fails to do anything really interesting or novel (much less artistic) – once again there is a confused blending of photorealism and caricature that never really works – but since no one can think of anything better this is what you get. There is more genius in a single old Warner Bros. short than in everything Disney and Pixar have done together, possibly even everything they have done separately. Cars reveals the atrocity of modern animation in all its breadth – a story written by people who can't draw, and come to think of it who can't write, either. I am sick to death of computer animated cartoons and especially the Pixar declension of them, and just wish they would go away. After watching this demoralizing movie – this dungbox for semi-retarded philistines – I don't know what more evidence need be shown to convict the beast Disney/Pixar than the movie itself. www.udolpho.com/weblog/?id=00970&title=Cars |
Now that's a classic!
So tell me, did you like it, or not?  M4-AK |