I will never doubt Pixar again

I’m a huge fan of almost all of Pixar's prior animated hits (Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., The Incredibles), but I thought they might have gone off the rails a bit when I heard about Cars, which, yes, is just what it sounds like - a story about cars. I honestly didn’t see how even the Pixar wizards could make me care all that much about a bunch of cars (clearly, I had forgotten that they once made me care about a bunch of fish) – so it says something about how good they are at what they do that I actually had a lump in my throat by the end of this charmer.

The story is about a hot shot racing car called Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson in characteristic laidback style). He’s the fastest rookie on the NASCAR circuit, a fiery red egomaniac with lots of dreams of stardom but not very many friends. In the movie's frenetic, giddy opening scene we watch him dazzle a packed stadium during the year-end Piston Cup championship race. This is about as exciting as animation gets, as the Pixar peeps literally put you in the middle of the race, right on the oval with little bits of pavement flying off the surface and whooshing past. The scene is also a spot-on riff on modern stadium sports, no small feat since the fans in the stands are all cars (that's right, there's not a human to be found in the whole flick). The cars do the wave by flashing their headlights all in a row. The pickup trucks drive right into the men’s room, while the little coupes and sedans have to wait in long lines at the women’s room. A duo of groupies asks Lightning to sign their headlights. As for the race, it ends in a three-way tie - with a legendary car appropriately voiced by Richard Petty and a grizzled frustrated vet voiced by Michael Keaton - so Lightning has a week to get himself out to California for the big tie-breaker that will decide the title.

On the way, though, he gets sidetracked in a little town off Route 66 called Radiator Springs, a sleepy burg full of mostly beat-up old buckets of bolts where no cars visit anymore since the highway was built. Our hero gets stuck there after he destroys the town's only road during a chase and is sentenced by the local judge - "Doc" Hudson Hornet, perfectly voiced by Paul Newman - to fix the damage before he can leave town. Long story short, Lightning finds that he kinda likes smalltown life. He’s charmed by the locals and ends up realizing that sometimes there's more to life when you pull off the highway and slow things down a bit. OK, so if you're looking for groundbreaking storytelling, you best look someplace else.

In fact, if you’ve ever seen Doc Hollywood, get ready to see it again, since Cars is essentially a note-for-note remake of that 1991 Michael J. Fox movie about a hotshot plastic surgeon seduced by smalltown Southern life on his way to Tinseltown. But the voices of the cars in Radiator Springs are perfectly cast, including Bonnie Hunt as a fetching Porsche who catches Lightning’s eye, George Carlin as a hippie VW bus, Cheech Marin as a flashy low-rider and Larry the Cable Guy as a particularly slack-bumpered yokel of a tow truck named Tow Mater. The animation is beautiful, and the scenery is gorgeous. To quote Tow Mater, Cars Gits 'R Done.