CARS 2

CARS 2. John Lasseter and Brad Lewis, co-dir., co-story with Dan Fogelman. Ben Queen, script. USA: Disney/Pixar (prod., Disney major distributor), 2011. See IMDb for the high-power voice cast.

Animation. If science fiction is frequently technological fiction, esp. as SciFi cinema, then the CARS duo is significant for its pitching to a young audience stories about cars, which in CARS 2 deals seriously, if too judgmentally and unsympathetically, with the issue of cars that are lemons and/or commercially unsuccessful and/or, now, kitsch (e.g., the Yugo, the Gremlin — but also the tendency for British-made cars to leak oil). Also features James Bondian cars and neat gadgets, and stressed shots of a TV camera as a weapon, the literal clockworks of Big Ben of London — rendered here as "Big Bentley" — threatening "Industrial-looking" modern warships, and a mass of deep-water oil-drilling platforms presented in a night-shot as a hellscape out of the opening of BLADE RUNNER.

5. DRAMA, RDE, 01/VII/11