Movie Review - Cars 2

Cars is one of Southern Man's favorite Pixar films, mostly because of the affectionate treatment given to the locale; Southern Man grew up in Arizona and lives on good red Southwestern dirt today, not far from a piece of Route 66 that takes him to his folk's home. That said, he knew very well that Cars 2 was going to be a rather different story, and it was. In short, if you don't care for Mater / Larry The Cable Guy, stay away; he, not racer Lightning McQueen, is the main character here - but even if you don't care for that particular brand of slapstick humor, it works well here. They have a lot of fun with the mistaken-as-a-spy subplot (think particularly tongue-in-cheek Bond, with Michael Caine voicing a suave British secret agent) and there are lots of laughs and sight gags of the wacky world that is modern Tokyo. The opening features a touching tribute to the Fabulous Hudson Hornet (Paul Newman having passed away) but they kept the late George Carlin's Fillmore with a new voice actor. The critics like this one even less than they did the original, but, let's face it, the first mediocre movie from Pixar rivals the best of many other studios. The Cars 2 DVD will get plenty of spin time in the Casa Southern Man DVD player.