21. Cars

I don’t think Cars is a good movie. It’s more like a clever bit that Pixar stretched out into a two-hour feature film. Cars is mostly a long worldbuilding gag that dares to ask the question, “What would the world look like if vehicles were at the top of the food chain and were somehow able to create an entire civilization with infrastructure despite lacking opposable thumbs?” The strength of Cars is that it’s so earnestly committed to its wild premise that you eventually buy into its world of sentient cars without the movie having to look at the camera and explain to you how this is logistically possible. But is that a good film? Is there really much to this story of a cocky racecar getting citizen-arrested by a bunch of podunk hillbillies because he accidentally caused some property damage? It’s fine. The movie’s fine. Certainly wasn’t good enough to merit the multimedia franchise it became, but those toy cars aren’t going to sell themselves. — KS