Cars are people in the new Pixar animation "Cars." They talk. They have feelings, ambitions, senses, affections and passions. There are old ones and young ones, pretty ones and homely ones, humble ones and wealthy ones. In the stands during an auto race, the spectators are also cars. The movie depicts a world without humans, one in which automobiles have interiors but for no discernible reason, except maybe as some evolutionary holdover. No one rides inside.
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In a way, "Cars" can be regarded as an experiment, to find out if a dramatic Pixar animation (albeit with a few comic interludes) can work artistically. That remains to be seen, but I think the relative failure of this movie can be measured in the answer to this question: Who would you rather look at in a scene about a young man's education, Owen Wilson and Paul Newman, or a computer drawing of a red and blue car? "Cars" might get us into car world as a gimmick, but it doesn't get us into car world as a state of mind. Thus, the animation, rather than seeming like an expression of the movie's deeper truth, becomes an impediment to it.
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