The Name's Mater, Tow Mater

Pixar is back (as they are every summer now) with their sequel to the highly successful and critically lauded “Cars”. The whole gang is back with a few additions. Owen Wilson and Larry the Cable Guy return as Lightning McQueen and Mater, respectively, and Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer and Eddie Izzard have been added to the impressive cast. Here’s the deal, Lightning McQueen is about to take the summer off racing and return to Radiator Springs when he’s challenged to a “World Grand Prix” by a flashy Italian racecar. Lightning and Mater (with a few other Radiator Springs residents in tow) jet off to Japan, Italy and England to take part in the race. While in Japan, however, Mater is mistaken for a world-class secret agent by Finn McMissile (voiced by Michael Caine) and Holley Shiftwell (voiced by Emily Mortimer). Without giving too much away, it becomes more of a spy movie with races in the background and a buddy movie between Lightning and Mater.

One of my favorite parts of this movie is the ability to explore the Cars world much more than we did in the original. The artists at Pixar did a tremendous job of creating real world locations in their digital format. It is fun to see how all the Cars inventions work, whether it is the bathrooms, the restaurants, the hotels, the planes because honestly, I was wondering how they did so much without hands in the first one. (Also, speaking of the Pixar world, during the Paris scene, keep a lookout for a shout out to another Pixar movie.)

It’s being released in 3D and IMAX, but I’m not sure how much more that will add to the movie. It was good enough in plain old 2D, but I could see the 3D depth technique that Pixar has perfected adding to the numerous racing and chase sequences. Either way, it’s Pixar so of course it’s good, and it’s definitely worth a trip to the theater to see it.

I was lucky enough to catch "Cars 2" at a screening at the the Nantucket Film Festival with Ben Queen, the screenwriter, in attendance. In a Q&A afterwards he really demonstrated the love that went into this movie and the immense attention to detail on the project. Illuminating on the pixar process he said that they do not focus on writing a movie towards children or adults, that thought does not even cross their mind while making the movie. What they do is make the movie they want to see. And that's awesome.