Cars Reviews
Rips off Doc Hollywood, almost note for note.
| Original Score: C+
Along came the interstate, apparently, and ruined everything. Just like that darned Internet, I guess, or that superhighway stuff, or those dumb movies they make with computers nowadays.
Cars might get us into car world as a gimmick, but it doesn't get us into car world as a state of mind. Thus, the animation, rather than seeming like an expression of the movie's deeper truth, becomes an impediment to it.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Though the central idea of nostalgia for a quieter, small-town life may well be lost on this movie's young audience -- Cars finds a pleasant and often sparkling groove.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Cars made me want to hop in my jalopy and to head out to Route 66, bypassing the boring interstate highways that made the Mother Road redundant.
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| Original Score: 3/4
It's beautiful to look at. The talking cars feel more alive than talking cars should.
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| Original Score: 3/5
It's another innovative piece of entertainment from the animation studio, taking the audience on a kinetic trip into a world populated only by automobiles.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Cars somewhat self-indulgently runs nearly two hours -- but overall, it's well worth the trip.
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Like the Toy Story films, Cars is a state-of-the-computer-art plea on behalf of outmoded, wholesome fifties technology, with a dash of Zen by way of George Lucas.
It achieves the near impossible, turning cars, trucks, tractors and farm harvesters into cute Disney characters whose fates you'll care about.
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| Original Score: 4/4
It thunders ahead with breezy abandon, scoring big grins on its way.
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| Original Score: 3/4
For parents out there whose future holds the certain prospect of the DVD version blaring repeatedly from family-room screens, let this by your advisory. Warning: Cars comes unequipped with two essential options -- charm and a good muffler.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
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.
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| Original Score: B+
Its characters may be made of steel, but this movie is made of sturdier stuff: heart and art.
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| Original Score: 4/4
Cars idles at times. And it's not until its final laps that the movie gains the emotional traction we've come to expect from the Toy Story and Nemo crews.
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| Original Score: 3/4
No other outfit can match Pixar's knack for plucking heartstrings without tearing them off the frets.
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| Original Score: B+
At 116 minutes, it's a test not of speed but endurance.
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.
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| Original Score: 3/4
None of the characters in Cars feel like flesh and blood. None of them feel like family. Instead, they're just a means to an end -- vehicles and nothing more.
The makers of Doc Hollywood called. They want their movie back.
Pixar finally rolled out a clunker.
| Original Score: 2/4
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.
While Cars may cross the finish line ahead of any of 2006's other animated films, it's several laps behind its Pixar siblings.
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| Original Score: 3/4
While it's a technically perfect movie, its tone is too manic, its characters too jaded and, in the end, its story too empty to stand up to expectations.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
It's the latest concoction from the geniuses at Pixar, probably the most inventive of the Computer Generated Imagery shop -- and the film's great fun, if well under the level of the first Toy Story.
... both in its ingratiating vibe and bland execution, Cars is nothing if not totally, disappointingly new-age Disney ...
| Original Score: 2/5
What's surprising about this supremely engaging film is the source of its curb appeal: It has heart.
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| Original Score: 4/5
The truest measure of the movie is that eventually we forget we're watching a bunch of vehicles with faces and start to think of them as individual characters. It's quite an accomplishment, and perhaps one only possible by Pixar.
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| Original Score: 4/5
It takes everything that's made Pixar shorthand for animation excellence -- strong characters, tight pacing, spot-on voice casting, a warm sense of humor and visuals that are pure, pixilated bliss -- and carries them to the next stage.
Cars, although obviously the product of highly gifted and hard-working animators, is something of a misfire.
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| Original Score: B
Cars gives you plenty of time to think, some of which you may wish to use wondering why it isn't a better movie.
| Original Score: 2.5/4
And as pop flies go, Cars is pretty to watch, even as it loops, drifts and, at times, looks as if it's just hanging in midair.
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| Original Score: 3/4
At almost 2 hours, the movie, well, exhausts its welcome, somehow managing to be simultaneously frenetic and leaden.
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| Original Score: C-
What ultimately redeems Cars from turning out a total lemon is its soul. Lasseter loves these animated inanimate objects as though they were kin, and it shows in every beautifully rendered frame.
Cars inspires more admiration than elation. It dazzles even as it disappoints.
While the other guys are still hawking talking animals, the folks at Pixar continue to up the anthropomorphic ante with terrific characters and crowd-pleasing storytelling that are as much a part of the company's much-deserved success as all that state-of
Despite representing another impressive technical achievement, it's the least visually interesting of the computer-animation boutique's movies, and -- in an ironic twist for a story about auto racing -- drifts slowly through its semi-arid midsection.
Existing both in turbo-charged today and the gentler '50s, straddling the realms of Pixar styling and old Disney heart, this new-model Cars is an instant classic.
I found it really touching. I mean this is a worthy edition to the great Pixar library.
Fueled with plenty of humor, action, heartfelt drama, and amazing new technical feats, Cars is a high octane delight for moviegoers of all ages.
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Time Out
Top CriticThere are many other brilliant scenes, some just as funny but there are just as many occasions where you feel the film's struggling to fire on all cylinders. Still, it's a Pixar film, right? And they're always worth a gander no matter what anyone says.
