Starring the voices of: Owen Wilson, Paul Newman, Bonnie Hunt
Directors: John Lasseter
Category: I (English and Cantonese versions)
Pixar's winning streak had to hit a bump somewhere along the road. Through Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo to The Incredibles, the animation studio has been raising the bar in software innovation and storytelling. Cars doesn't exactly stall, but it does sputter a bit and doesn't quite fire with the same narrative horsepower as its predecessors.
For his first directorial effort since 1999's Toy Story 2, Pixar founder John Lasseter has settled on a nostalgic tale of a big city hotshot finding happiness in small-town Americana charm. Our anthropomorphic characters are talking automobiles, and life's fast lane is essentially the oval tracks of Nascar races. This is a Pixar paradise for rednecks, where no one worries about greenhouse gas or fossil-fuel shortages, and a paved road can be a thing of beauty.
On the way to a crucial race in California, a red spitfire hot rod named Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson, although Michael J. Fox would have been so much better) gets lost and is stuck in a sleepy one-road desert town called Radiator Springs. There, he meets an assortment of kooky vehicles, a little slow of wheel but possessing carburettors of gold, including a polished little female Porsche (Bonnie Hunt).