Cars 2 (Rhoades)

“Cars 2” Is Up to Speed
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Thanks, Henry Ford. We’re a nation obsessed by cars. Adults own them for transportation, for status, for the thrill of driving, for the privilege of paying $4 a gallon at the tanks.
Even kids are obsessed with cars from the time they’re buckled into the safety of a car seat to the time that a hormones-raging teenager asks to borrow dad’s car.

In between, youngsters have plenty of toy cars to hold their attention – die-cast Matchbox cars and sturdy Tonka trucks and fast Hot Wheels racers and extra-large Bruder vehicles and Playskool’s playful Chuck My Talking Truck and even Hasbro’s Transformer Chevy that turns into a robotic alien called Bumblebee.

And now we have a return of Disney’s Pixar cars, plastic replicas of those anthropomorphic automobiles from the movie “Cars 2.” This new computer animated comedy adventure is currently revving its engines at the Tropic Cinema.

“Cars 2” is, of course, a sequel to that popular 2006 Pixar film of the same name.
This time around, racecar Lightning McQueen and a tow truck named Mater head abroad to compete in the World Grand Prix, but Mater gets sidetracked with some silly cloak-and-dagger shenanigans.

Owen Wilson (you just saw him in the new Woody Allen film) provides the voice of Lightning McQueen. And Larry the Cable Guy (Daniel Lawrence Whitney) speaks for the tow truck.

Pixar began in 1979 as part of the Computer Division at LucasFilm before then-ousted Apple co-founder Steve Jobs acquired it in 1986. The Walt Disney Company bought Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion, making Jobs the largest shareholder in Disney.

And considering that Disney bought Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion a couple years ago, you could stretch the point and say Jobs “owns” the comic book company and all those superhero movies. So with “Thor,” “X-Men: First Class,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” and now “Cars 2,” you might say Steve Jobs owns the summer’s movie screens.

“Cars 2” should be a big hit with the kiddy set.

But it makes me wonder, if cars and movies are such a popular combination, whatever happened to drive-in movies?

srhoades@aol.com
[from Solares Hill)