According to Rotten Tomatoes, “Cars 2” is by far the worst-reviewed Disney/Pixar movie to date, with between a 30% and 40% approval rating. Before “Cars 2”, Pixar’s film with the lowest score was the original “Cars”, with a still modest 74%. For some reason critics just aren’t comfortable with the idea of talking cars. There’ve been talking toys, monsters, bugs, fish, rats and a robot who sort of talked, and they’re all o.k. So what’s the problem with talking cars?
This is another example of why you can’t always trust the percentage number you see on the Rotten Tomatoes home page. “Cars 2” is a great movie, and certainly deserves its place with “The Incredibles” “Up”, and “Toy Story 2” on my list of B+ rated Pixar films. Some critics are saying that any studio could’ve made “Cars 2”. Of course that statement is ridiculous. No other studio could’ve come up with a clever story with so many inside jokes and references. No other studio would take as much time to work on a single film to make sure that it was as technically perfect as “Cars 2” is.
Many critics believe that this story isn’t of the same quality as most of Pixar’s previous movies, and that the film is confusing. A lot of these are the same people who were so proud to say they had no problem understanding “Inception” last summer, but yet they can’t follow what’s going on in “Cars 2”? And the biggest complaint I’m hearing is that Pixar shouldn’t have made Mater the central character of the movie. Well guess what? – Mater was the break-out star of the first film, he’s the funniest of all the “Cars” characters (and his humor is needed to balance-out the spy portion of the script) and Mater was the perfect choice to connect the past story with this new story. Lightning McQueen couldn’t have been the accidental spy, and who else is there?
I feel that most other critics are taking “Cars 2” way too seriously, and should simply enjoy and praise the movie for what it is: a fun action-adventure with lots of laughs. Is it “Toy Story 3”? No. I think we can all agree on that. But I’m proud to be part of the minority of critics who agree that “Cars 2” is one of the highlights of Pixar’s 25-years of moviemaking.