The first CARS movie contained a surprise in the early moments of the movie. When the race begins the cars really come alive. You can connect with them growling and leaning into the turns as they try and win the race. The entire scene takes about 10 minutes, and it's exhilarating. And the first CARS movie, while wonderful, loses some of it's momentum from there.

In CARS 2 there are no surprise moments. Well, it is surprising how the racing franchise got mashed up with James Bond. The characters are all there, Mater, Lightning, Buzz Lightyear (oh wait, sorry). But we've seen these cars as emotional characters for so many years now, there is no surprise like there was in CARS 1, where you really connected, for the first time, with the cars themselves. It's like in Nemo when the seagulls start cawing, "Mine, mine, mine." A perfect movie moment. Hard to script. Very hard to duplicate.

So CARS 2 left me without much zip. My eight-yo daughter and I resisted going to see the movie this afternoon in the first place. She looked at me about an hour into the movie and mouthed, "I'm bored."

The box office receipts will reveal if we will see a CARS 3. I guess they could go into outer space next time.

NOTE: And we skipped the 3D version. My kids and I prefer the 2D versions most of the time.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://uber.la/2011/06/cars-2/ ‎

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