Cars 2 (2011)

  This is one of those times where I went to the theater and just saw whatever was playing soonest.  It's not my fault.  New Boyfriend asked me to wait until he got back from vacation so we could see Cowboys and Aliens together.  Blame him.

This is the worst reviewed film Pixar has ever had.  Even still, it doesn't suck as much as some movies I've seen.  I think the main problem is that it doesn't know who its audience is.  If you made it live-action, same script, same cast, it would work as a spy film, something along the lines of If Looks Could Kill.  If you replaced Richard Grieco with Larry the Cable Guy.

A lateral move, some would say.

Tow Mater is very much the star of this movie, accompanying his friend Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) to the World Grand Prix, hosted by Sir Miles Axelrod (Eddie Izzard).  Sir Miles is throwing this race in order to tout his new alternative fuel Allinol.  However, the evil society of lemons has rigged a device capable of shooting electromagnetic pulses at cars and blowing their engine blocks.  Superspy extraordinaire Finn McMissile (Michael Caine) and his technology proficient contact Holly Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer) are tracking this device.  Their American contact in deep cover (motherfuckin' Bruce Campbell!) gets jumped in a Towkyo (ugh) bathroom and manages to stash the info onto Mater's chassis.  Cue the comical mistaken identity music.

I don't have children and I don't make a habit of being around them so I can't really say whether or not kids would get all the jokes, or even the majority of the plot.  How many kids grasp the conflict of fossil fuels versus alternative energy?

As in every Pixar film, there are several references to other Pixar films.  In Radiator Springs, for example, the movie playing on the drive-in is The Incredimobiles, and during the race in Paris, you can see the frontage for Gastow's, the restaurant from Ratatouille.  I didn't see anything that would count as a sneak peek at their new feature, Brave, but I'm sure it was there.

Honestly, I felt the ticket price was totally worth the short at the beginning, which concerned Barbie and Ken's Hawaiian vacation after Toy Story 3.  Adorable.  If something had happened and that was the only part I had seen, I would have been okay with that.