My sister-in-law texted me a few weeks ago with grim news.
"They want to see Cars 2. And Mr. Popper's Penguins." That was followed with something about shooting herself.
The "they" she's referring to are her son Bela and daughter Claudia, ages 2 and 3. They had seen the Kung Fu Panda sequel, and apparently seeing previews for these other kid-friendly movies had gotten them interested.
I couldn't blame Amber for being unenthused by the notion of spending 90 minutes with Jim Carrey and dancing CGI penguins*, but I felt the need to defend Cars 2. Or more to the point, to defend Pixar.
"The Pixar movies aren't like other kids movies," I wrote back (and a lot of his is paraphrasing). "They're not loud and hyperactive. They won't be dated by pop culture references the way a lot of cartoons are now. Adults can appreciate them as much, if not more than, kids..."
Etc. etc. I wasn't all that original in my pro-Pixar arguments. But I was convincing...sort of.
"Fine," Amber wrote back. "YOU take them."
And so we did. It was semi-disastrous. The kids seemed bored -- although later they apparently couldn't stop talking about the Cars -- and we left close to the end following a complete meltdown.
And I learned two things:
1. 113 minutes is far too long for a kids movie, especially one that follows 15-20 minutes of trailers and the standard Pixar short that follows its movies.
2. This is the first Pixar movie I wouldn't see again.
Don't get me wrong: it's not a bad movie. I didn't groan through it, the way I do for even the trailers for things like the Smurfs, those Chipmunk movies.
Even if it feels more like a kids' movie than, say, Finding Nemo or Monsters Inc, it's clever, it moves quickly despite it's running time, and the characters are all pretty likable.**
If I hadn't been worrying about two toddlers the whole time, or fielding their questions, I wouldn't have been bored.
Yet the movie didn't really work for me, and I think that has a lot to do with the fact that the cars' universe doesn't really work for me.
Whether they've centered around toys, fish or superheroes, the Pixar movies have all existed in a recognizable world.
But what world are the Cars in? It's one that includes TV, restaurants, Tokyo, Paris and London...but no people.
So where did the cars come from? Is there some sort of Planet of the Apes situation at work? Or are we seeing -- as cartoonist Joel Watson suggested recently --the world after SkyNet?
Or maybe it has to do with the notion that I can't identify with a car. I've written before about how I didn't as weepy over the end of Toy Story 3 as the rest of the country apparently did, but I at least always thought my toys had some sort of personality.
But never my cars. I've never loved a car, given one a nickname, or even called it "she." It's just an expensive, important tool.
And finally, there's part of me that's a bit disappointed that the last two Pixar movies (as well as the studio's 2013 film, Monsters University) have been sequels. Not bad ones, or derivatives ones. But they're still sequels. As much as I admire their willingness to expand the universes they've created, I'd rather see them create new ones.
* Seriously, what is it with dancing penguins? When we saw Cars 2, there were two different trailers that featured them.
** Even Mater, the tow truck voiced by Larry the Cable guy, who I normally find pretty distasteful.
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