Taking the chequered flag with a largely unchequered performance

When the first manifestation of Cars was given silver screen billing, it was held generally to be one of Pixar’s lesser creations, given the high standard that was expected of the computer animated arm of Disney. Though a fan of Pixar from before and thereafter, I decided to eschew this release. I considered the same approach for the sequel, until a review on Radio 4’s Front Row that I heard on the off-chance was so fulsome in its praise I decided to give Cars 2 a fair hearing (and viewing).
I was especially motivated given that Michael Caine was one of the stars lending their voice, in a very postmodern way, in his role as secret agent and souped-up car as one; it won’t be long before his glamorous James Bondish performances outnumber his original ‘ordinary spy’ turn in The Ipcress File et al – the very reason he is getting such latter-day opportunities such as Austin Powers and now here.
Since the original, Paul Newman has passed on but he knew the nature of franchises (not just in film) and his character Doc Hudson has been retired altogether, though the Doc is often invoked by the slow (in many ways) tow truck, Mater (voiced by Larry the Cable Guy), which, along with Caine’s Finn McMissile, is the dual centre of the show (like a binary solar system), leaving Owen Wilson’s turbo-charged sleekness in the form of Lightning McQueen for dust (figuratively).
Film writers are always inculcated with the need to have a twist to ‘wrongfoot’ the audience and make them re-analyse the movie in retrospect; Hollywood 101, as can also be evinced in The Green Hornet, that the chief villain of the piece (not least through their betrayal of others) must be an important, if peripheral’ ‘good guy’ and I take particular pleasure in spotting the disguised blackguard as soon as possible, though I’ll forgive Pixar’s attempt as it is meant for children also and they tried pretty hard to throw me off their tail. Once in the know, you can even detect the aural signature through a voice-scrambled message – the key in this instance is that the mysterious bad guy and the ‘good guy’ were never in the same shot.
An immense charm of Cars 2 is the cornucopia of incidental detail, the personality of each mode of transport rendered exquisitely and with so much detail on display, one’s eyes are overwhelmed with delight. Intelligence abounds such as making the brutish henchman stealth ships like sharks or giving the Italian F1 vehicle a quiff of hair via an engine duct (though, amusingly, all the young females are bald). Big Bentley skirts my objections as the British landmark tower – not just the bell – might have been renamed as such in this universe. Of course, the Queen (in the tones of Vanessa Redgrave) is a Roll-Royce, while Prince William is an S-Type Jaguar, proving the newly created Duke of Cambridge still maintains overseas glamour in his own right and not when paired with his wife.
Some of the violence meted out is horrendous, craftily pushing the boundaries of a Universal rating, given that they are cartoon cars after all. There are a few errors that I managed to spot without recourse to a bloopers website (Egypt is not immediately to the southwest of Italy, in place of Tunisia, something less forgivable after the Arab Spring) but they do not impinge on either the picture’s credibility or its fun. Cars 2 can be enjoyed by petrolheads and pedestrians alike, as well as all others in between. 4 out of 5.