Cars

UK Release Date. 28 July 2006
Certification. PG
Running Time. 1 hour 56 mins
Director. John Lasseter, Joe Ranft
Cast. Bonnie Hunt, Michael Keaton, Larry the Cable Guy, Paul Newman, Richard Petty, Owen Wilson.
Rating. 69%

Review.

"I'm American made, Bud Light, Chevrolet. My mama taught me wrong from right.

I was born in the south, sometimes I have a big mouth. When I see something that I don't like…"

From the opening chords of Sheryl Crow's Real Gone, Cars is an unashamed celebration of all things American. But despite the loud and lurid spectacle of NASCAR, the celebration is one of a nostalgic, sepia-toned America. A time when cruising Route 66 in beautifully designed automobiles was the order of the day. 

The message in Cars is simplicity itself: Life was better in the old days, when life revolved around quaint, small towns where everybody knew each other’s name. And adventures on small highways like Route 66, where new friends were made, often between Flagstaff, Arizona and San Bernandino. “Forty years ago, it wasn’t about making great time, it was about having a great time,” says Sally (Bonnie Hunt), lamenting the fact that the interstate highway now bypasses Radiator Springs - “the cutest little town in Carburetor County.”

This halcyon period in American history has long been much-beloved by Hollywood, but I can’t help but wonder if the film's primary audience will much care about the 1950s and its cars? Certainly, those members of the audience more accustomed to the frenetic pace of previous Pixar films - the likes of Toy Story, Monsters, Inc. and The Incredibles - will grow restless in their seats, but I can’t confirm, Cars is perfectly paced. The film proceeds at a gentle pace, and whilst the action may slow down in the mid-section, the plot never does. Nowhere is this epitomised more than Randy Newman's painfully wistful Our Town, sung by James Taylor.

But the genuine highlight of Cars undoubtedly is the casting Paul Newman as Doc Hudson. I don’t know how on earth animation can portray a 1951 Hudson Hornet [a popular stock car racing model of the 1950s] in a manner that could simultaneously look like itself and like Paul Newman. But somehow, the animators involved in Cars achieve this feat. For those of us who grew up with Paul Newman, the casting, and the lines spoken, with gravitas and experience, are even more bittersweet. This was Paul Newman's final feature film in an illustrious and distinguished career - Hud, The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid and The Sting - before his death from lung cancer in 2008. 

The end result is a film packed with charm, but equally, an underlying sense of loss.