Road movie with a twist

After all those movies in which human beings could be mistaken for automatons, Hollywood now gives us one in which automobiles become humans. It seems to have worked a treat, because this Pixar animation has already made more than $200 million in the States, and has even achieved a panegyric in Positif, the intellectual French film magazine.

Although it's rather too long for its own good and no match for Toy Story (surely director John Lasseter's best work), it at least provides a more than passable celebration of Pixar's 20th anniversary and the company's recent acquisition by Disney.

It's hero is Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson), a hotshot and ambitious rookie race car who's on his way to the big Piston Cup where he will compete against seasoned pros who will do anything to win. Instead of driving on the new motorway towards California, he finds himself on the old Route 66 and in the sleepy town of Radiator Springs, half of whose shops have been boarded up now the motorway has taken the tourists away.

There he meets Sally Carrera (Bonnie Hunt), a lovesick Porsche with a motel, Doc Hudson (Paul Newman), a 1951 Hudson Hornet, once a formidable racer but now in sulky retirement, and Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), a rusty tow-truck who likes to play tricks on sleeping tractors. And Lightning begins to like them enough to realise than there are more important things to life than trophies, fame and fortune. So when the big race comes around, we don't quite get the usual feelgood, flag-waving ending.

All this could undoubtedly have been traversed in 100 minutes rather than two hours, however much one admires the way Lasseter and his team have made definable characters out of the vehicles, and however well they have drawn in the fabulous desert background and the racing circuit with its 60,000 automobile spectators.

Sometimes the plotting is very loose but one mustn't grumble. Most of this is first-class animation and it's clear that those doing the voice-overs - who include several distinguished racers (among them Michael Schumacher and Richard Petty), as well as Tony Shalhoub, Cheech Marin and Michael Keaton - are having a ball. Whether you will is a moot point.

If you can divide westerns into Democratic and Republican movies, you would have to call this a Democratic piece of animation, aware of the wilful destruction of old America (Route 66) and of the need to do something else in the world than simply win battles.

Even so, you could hardly call Cars overtly political. It's unusual in the seriousness of some of its ancillary concerns, which are are put across with a pawky humour. I will now look at my car in a new light and address it as Lightning McMalcolm.

Cars
Cert: PG