Cars 2
I neglected to mention it, but I saw Cars 2 recently. The commercials looked atrocious, but it's Pixar; they can pull gold out of garbage. Besides which, I was one of the few people above the age of ten that actually liked the first movie. It was predictable (and apparently a ripoff of Doc Hollywood), but it was self-aware of that. Its strength was its charm, characters, and humor, as well as its own automotive spin on a well-worn story. It was cute, y'know? Nothing new, but enjoyable anyway.
Cars 2 was also pretty predictable, but it maintained none of the charm of its predecessor. It started off well enough. I was pleasantly surprised that the James Bond-esque spy plot was relevant to the characters being cars -- I'd assumed it would be a standard spy story with cars shoehorned in for the sake of making a sequel. It was also pretty fun to see the standard James Bond gadgets reinvented for car use.
But, of course, it didn't balance well with, you know, the rest of the movie. About racing. Which, honestly, was a far more enjoyable story. I realized in the first half hour that I would be perfectly content with a standard "Win The Race" plot, as the appeal of the movie really was seeing the characters again and discovering what they'd been up to since we last saw them. It wouldn't have been a very impressive plot, but it could have been better than... this.
Let's just cut to the chase, to the real problem of the movie, the thing that ruined it utterly. The spy plot wasn't bad in and of itself, but it suffered from a major problem that dragged it down. I didn't notice until about halfway through the movie, but there came a moment when the camera had been following Tow Mater and the spies a little too long. "When is Lightning going to get involved in this spy plot mess?" I wondered, seeing as he featured prominently in the start of the film and was the protagonist before. "Or when are we going to cut back to his races at least?" And then I realized with absolute horror that Lightning wasn't the main character in this movie. Mater was.
They made the comic relief the main character of a SPY MOVIE.
Needless to say, he cannot carry a film. At all. Because he's the comic relief. And the comic relief is Saving the Day, Learning Lessons, and Getting the Girl.
Wait, I lie. Mater has a revelation about himself, but ultimately doesn't learn or change at all. It's Lightning who has to learn the all-important lesson (that he carefully passes down to the audience in as many Small Words as possible) that it's important to be loyal to your idiot friend, because if the rest of the world thinks he's a dipshit rude moron strange fellow, it's the rest of the world that needs to change, not your dipshit friend.
Because if no one likes you, clearly it's the problem of everyone else and you shouldn't feel obligated to change your inappropriate behavior. That's a great lesson for the kids.
Which segues right into another problem: This is the first Pixar film I saw that I honestly felt unwelcome watching. I strongly felt there was a very specific Target Audience and that audience was under the age of six years old. Of course all Pixar films are aimed at kids, but they also don't dumb things down for the kids, so it's enjoyable by people of any age. A target audience doesn't have to be the only audience.
This movie just stank of Kid's Film. The dialogue was dumbed down, the story was formulaic to the point they forced cliches on it (Mater would never get The Girl in any other type of film), and the main character was Mater, for crying out loud. They were clearly just trying to appeal to what made the kids laugh the most. Which is pretty dumb, considering I think most kids find Mater funny, but probably not heroic or relateable. It's also insulting to the kids, seeing as this is the same audience that liked the first film just fine without having everything dumbed down for them.
On the other hand, the movie features R-rated violence and gets away with it because the characters being horribly killed aren't human. One spy car in particular is slowly tortured before his engine blows and he bursts into flames. It's disturbing and stands in stark contrast with the intelligence-insulting comedy. One moment, Mater is teaching you a Very Important Lesson, the next, characters are being brutally murdered. It's enough to give the viewer mood whiplash.
I think I have to give up on Pixar. Ratatouille was a mess, Wall-E was a (cute) PSA, Up fell to mediocrity after a beautiful first ten minutes, and Toy Story 3 was... well... It was probably the best of the bunch, but it was also the second sequel to something that probably didn't need the first sequel.
Cars 2 was such a blatant example of Selling Out, it makes me a little sick. It's timed perfectly to milk merchandise sales, they dumb it down to target the audience that will demand all this merchandise, and they highlight a weak character because he was popular with the younger audience. I expected better of Pixar.
I've seen so many more movies this year than I usually bother with, and with each film I'm reminded why I've never bothered before. Captain America had better be good; otherwise, the best film I've seen this year is somehow freaking Sucker Punch.
Cars 2 was also pretty predictable, but it maintained none of the charm of its predecessor. It started off well enough. I was pleasantly surprised that the James Bond-esque spy plot was relevant to the characters being cars -- I'd assumed it would be a standard spy story with cars shoehorned in for the sake of making a sequel. It was also pretty fun to see the standard James Bond gadgets reinvented for car use.
But, of course, it didn't balance well with, you know, the rest of the movie. About racing. Which, honestly, was a far more enjoyable story. I realized in the first half hour that I would be perfectly content with a standard "Win The Race" plot, as the appeal of the movie really was seeing the characters again and discovering what they'd been up to since we last saw them. It wouldn't have been a very impressive plot, but it could have been better than... this.
Let's just cut to the chase, to the real problem of the movie, the thing that ruined it utterly. The spy plot wasn't bad in and of itself, but it suffered from a major problem that dragged it down. I didn't notice until about halfway through the movie, but there came a moment when the camera had been following Tow Mater and the spies a little too long. "When is Lightning going to get involved in this spy plot mess?" I wondered, seeing as he featured prominently in the start of the film and was the protagonist before. "Or when are we going to cut back to his races at least?" And then I realized with absolute horror that Lightning wasn't the main character in this movie. Mater was.
They made the comic relief the main character of a SPY MOVIE.
Needless to say, he cannot carry a film. At all. Because he's the comic relief. And the comic relief is Saving the Day, Learning Lessons, and Getting the Girl.
Wait, I lie. Mater has a revelation about himself, but ultimately doesn't learn or change at all. It's Lightning who has to learn the all-important lesson (that he carefully passes down to the audience in as many Small Words as possible) that it's important to be loyal to your idiot friend, because if the rest of the world thinks he's a dipshit rude moron strange fellow, it's the rest of the world that needs to change, not your dipshit friend.
Because if no one likes you, clearly it's the problem of everyone else and you shouldn't feel obligated to change your inappropriate behavior. That's a great lesson for the kids.
Which segues right into another problem: This is the first Pixar film I saw that I honestly felt unwelcome watching. I strongly felt there was a very specific Target Audience and that audience was under the age of six years old. Of course all Pixar films are aimed at kids, but they also don't dumb things down for the kids, so it's enjoyable by people of any age. A target audience doesn't have to be the only audience.
This movie just stank of Kid's Film. The dialogue was dumbed down, the story was formulaic to the point they forced cliches on it (Mater would never get The Girl in any other type of film), and the main character was Mater, for crying out loud. They were clearly just trying to appeal to what made the kids laugh the most. Which is pretty dumb, considering I think most kids find Mater funny, but probably not heroic or relateable. It's also insulting to the kids, seeing as this is the same audience that liked the first film just fine without having everything dumbed down for them.
On the other hand, the movie features R-rated violence and gets away with it because the characters being horribly killed aren't human. One spy car in particular is slowly tortured before his engine blows and he bursts into flames. It's disturbing and stands in stark contrast with the intelligence-insulting comedy. One moment, Mater is teaching you a Very Important Lesson, the next, characters are being brutally murdered. It's enough to give the viewer mood whiplash.
I think I have to give up on Pixar. Ratatouille was a mess, Wall-E was a (cute) PSA, Up fell to mediocrity after a beautiful first ten minutes, and Toy Story 3 was... well... It was probably the best of the bunch, but it was also the second sequel to something that probably didn't need the first sequel.
Cars 2 was such a blatant example of Selling Out, it makes me a little sick. It's timed perfectly to milk merchandise sales, they dumb it down to target the audience that will demand all this merchandise, and they highlight a weak character because he was popular with the younger audience. I expected better of Pixar.
I've seen so many more movies this year than I usually bother with, and with each film I'm reminded why I've never bothered before. Captain America had better be good; otherwise, the best film I've seen this year is somehow freaking Sucker Punch.