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Reconsidering "Cars": It's the Journey

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Back in June, I received an email from reader Joel Solon recommending the movie "Cars" from Disney and Pixar. I thanked him for the tip, but I admitted to a lack of enthusiasm for the movie, mainly because of its NASCAR-based premise. Now that this brand of auto racing has surpassed even professional football in popularity, I could only conclude that Pixar had finally subverted their story-telling expertise by pandering to the NASCAR mob. I became a huge fan of Pixar's previous features, especially "The Incredibles" and the "Toy Story" movies, mainly because of the well-crafted narratives, but also because of the animators' attention to aesthetic detail and their subtle yet powerful nods to preservation. In Toy Story 2 -- a rare example where the sequel actually surpassed the original -- the plot wove into its action-adventure premise a damning commentary on greed and hoarding in the collector market. Those of us with even a remote interest in preservation and who has met anyone with a closets full of "still-in-the-box" anything had to appreciate this movie on at least two levels. Cars, on the other hand, failed to garner the critical acclaim of its predecessors after last summer's release. That and my bewilderment at NASCAR's popularity kept me out of the theater. I see the "sport" as a kind of monument to American excess and further argument that Lincoln should have let the South secede, so I wrote off this Pixar effort as the end of its long streak of hits. But Joel wrote, "I think Cars was animated by people who feel the same way about the lost highways and the architecture alongside it as some diner fans do. There are exaggerations, of course -- it's a kids movie with talking cars, after all. But overall I think they got it right." Except that the trailers showed little or none of this. After finally seeing the movie on DVD last week, I have to agree with Joel, and now I'm actually sorry I didn't see it on the big screen after I started to notice background details not easily discerned on a 19-inch television. The movie was nearly finished before I saw the Cadillac Ranch-shaped mountain range in the distance. In the end, the movie wasn't really about NASCAR or the "thrill" of auto racing, but more about how we've lost the enjoyment of just driving around and looking at stuff -- of enjoying the journey as much as the destination. Sounds like something straight from the pages of Roadside. .