Review #1,276: 'Cars 3' (2017)

From a purely merchandising point of view, Pixar's Cars franchise is nothing short of a masterstroke. Even if the films, spin-offs, and straight-to-DVD shorts aren't up to scratch - and they aren't - children will be sure to ask mummy and daddy for the latest sleek toy, no matter how obscure the character. In response, the Cars movies have added numerous forgettable new characters with each film, adding to their extensive range of collectables in the process. It's a cynical approach, but merchandise has always been Disney's bread-and-butter in their quest to seemingly own everything. As a result, Cars 2 was a huge disappointment; a half-arsed sequel to a movie that had already left many underwhelmed, which took the central story off on a random tangent and promoted the annoying sidekick to the central hero. Still, it made lots of money, so a trilogy-closer was inevitable.

Thankfully, Pixar and director Brian Fee have scrapped the spy thriller angle altogether, and relegated buck-toothed tow truck Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) back to the role of comic relief dished out in small doses. The focus is back on Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and his antics on the race track, so Cars 3 is, if anything, a massive improvement on its predecessor. McQueen is now in the twilight of his career; a seven-time Piston Cup champion and bona fide racing legend, enjoying the on-track banter with his closest rivals. However, he is given a wake-up call when newcomer Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer), employing a fancy chassis, the latest in car technology, and an extensive knowledge of statistics, beats McQueen easily. Soon enough, his fellow veterans start retiring in droves, and those who don't are quickly laid off by their sponsors to make way for the new guys hot off the assembly line (or are they born?).

It's a bland and uninspiring story of the new out-muscling the old, but there are still things to enjoy in Cars 3. They've finally enlisted a female racer in the form of energetic personal trainer Cruz Ramirez (Cristela Alonzo), who treats McQueen like a car ready to fall apart at any second, and it also offers a fitting resolution to Doc's story, who was splendidly voiced by Paul Newman before he sadly passed, as McQueen seeks out a new mentor. Yet, the beautiful and detailed animation, combined with the welcome return to the grit of the race track, cannot save Cars 3 from mediocrity. It's essentially an existential exploration of midlife crisis, chocked full of childish humour and wrapped up in a sports movie formula, so it's difficult to work out just who the target audience is. It wisely makes a point of dodging genre cliches with an interesting climax, but the lack of character investment (McQueen has always been the blandest of Pixar's heroes) means that this doesn't pay off as well as it should. Like its racers, the Cars franchise seems to be stuck in an eternal loop without anywhere to go.


Directed by: Brian Fee
Voices: Owen Wilson, Cristela Alonzo, Chris Cooper, Nathan Fillion, Larry the Cable Guy, Armie Hammer, Tony Shalhoub, Bonnie Hunt
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,266: 'Cars' (2006)

Ever since Pixar first wowed cinema-going audiences across the globe with their feature-length debut Toy Story, the company has become the standard for cinematic excellence. Not only for their constantly groundbreaking animation and ability to entertain both children and adults alike, but for the quality of their scripts and the amount of genuine heart that pours out of them. Yet for every WALL-E, The Incredibles or Inside Out there's always a Monsters University, A Bug's Life or Brave. These films still get a pass because, after all, "it's only a kid's movie," but the disappointment is all the more crushing with the knowledge of Pixar's capabilities. Cars is firmly in the latter category, falling into the traps of a familiar plot and a script that isn't quite up to scratch.

Cars' reputation has been damaged ever further in the decade since its release, and this is no doubt thanks to the lazy and bitter-tasting sequels and spin-offs, something the company has churned out at an increasing rate ever since Disney took over. I must admit that I didn't think much of Cars back in 2005. It lacked excitement and a character to really root for, and the story of a cocky upstart learning learning a valuable lesson to change their outlook on the world can be seen in countless other children's movies. However, on my second viewing I found moments of tenderness between the cracks, an old-fashioned romanticism to really warm the heart. The movie is about more than a young race car named Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) and his quest to escape the forgotten town of Radiator Spings to reach the Piston Cup. It's also about the changing face of America and the way its capitalist nature is leaving the little guys behind.

One aspect of Cars that was never criticised was its cutting-edge animation, and the way it brought the loud, dangerous world of racing and the country's glorious landscapes to beautiful life. It is still utterly glorious to look at, whether it be a wide shot of a darkening horizon or a close-up of buck-toothed tow truck Mater (Larry the Cable Guy). The small town off Route 66 is full of other colourful archetypes, voiced by the likes of Paul Newman, Bonnie Hunt, Tony Shalhoub, Cheech Marin and George Carlin. The problems I had with the film the first time around are still present - the climax should be a lump-in-the-throat moment but is oddly devoid of emotion, and the film offers no surprises at all - but they just didn't seem to bother me as much. The hefty running-time (just shy of 2 hours) also whizzed by, despite the lack of genuine laugh-out-loud moments. So forget Cars 2, Planes and those awful-looking straight-to-DVD spin-offs you ignore in Tesco, and give Cars another chance.


Directed by: John Lasseter
Voices: Owen Wilson, Paul Newman, Bonnie Hunt, Larry the Cable Guy, Cheech Marin, Tony Shalhoub, George Carlin, Michael Keaton
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #984: 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' (2014)

Not content with taking one beloved 80's cartoon (Transformers) and draining it of all personality and the sort of charm that made it so appealing to begin with, Michael Bay - here on production duties - has now made a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie simply because he could. In his hands, the title seems less the quirky advert for the cartoons bat-shit crazy mythology than a series of series of keywords input by the type of audience it's attempting to attract. It retains enough of the back-story originally created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird to justify calling itself a Turtles movie, but ultimately panders to a teenage audience too young to know any better.

Young New York reporter April O'Neil (Megan Fox) is becoming frustrated at her stations insistence that she cover tedious news stories while a terrorist organisation named the Foot Clan instigate a crime wave throughout the city. During a couple of close encounters with the Clan, in which she happens to be at the right place at the right time, April spies a quartet of huge vigilantes who save the day before disappearing into the night. One night, she follows the trail and discovers that the vigilantes are four 6-foot anthropomorphic ninja turtles named Leonardo (Pete Ploszek with Johnny Knoxville's voice), Raphael (Alan Ritchson), Donatello (Jeremy Howard) and Michelangelo (Noel Fisher).

William Fichtner plays a corrupt CEO named Eric Stacks, whose big plan is to infect the city with a virus only he and his company have the vaccine for. It's a wonder why Stacks wasn't just written as the big bad rather than having him report to Shredder (Tohoru Masamune), a huge Japanese warrior with an impressive set of kitchen knives. Yet since Marvel established the potential for universe building and the money to be made from it, an increasingly common blockbuster trait is sacrificing a stand-alone story for the sake of establishing a franchise. With Ninja Turtles, we get a half-baked plot that simply teases how exciting things could get, without really delivering in the movie we are actually watching. Only a shell-surf down a snowy mountain that leaves the law of physics in its wake really excites.

The film isn't quite as awful as I'm perhaps making it out to be, but it's let down by being so shockingly mediocre. The main positives are the turtles themselves. While being underused (Leonardo barely gets a look in), they are stunningly rendered. Far more grotesque creations than those of the cartoon, they are almost completely life-like, all bulging muscles and tatty clothes. Unlike the indistinguishable hunks of metal of Transformers, you can also actually tell them apart (although their character development doesn't reach beyond 'leader', 'hard-ass', 'tech-genius' and 'loose-cannon'). In between the CGI fist-fights is when the film really suffers. Bay's influence can be felt throughout, no more than the cutesy fast-talk bickering between April and her horny partner Vernon (Will Arnett) who share zero chemistry and are lumbered with some cringe-worth one-liners. Despite all of this, the world-building obviously worked, with the sequel due to arrive later this year.


Directed by: Jonathan Liebesman
Starring: Megan Fox, Will Arnett, William Fichtner, Alan Ritchson, Noel Fisher, Pete Ploszek, Johnny Knoxville, Jeremy Howard, Tony Shalhoub
Country: USA

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #914: 'Pain & Gain' (2013)

The last few years have been somewhat kind to the cinema meat-head. Channing Tatum has found his niche bringing sweetness and humanity to the square-jawed jock with roles in 21 Jump Street (2012) and Foxcatcher (2014), and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Don Jon managing to find a heart beneath it's slick-haired, vest-wearing and gym-obsessed protagonist. Pain & Gain attempts to take a satirical swipe at the type of people who take pictures of themselves after a workout session and plaster their achievements all over social media, as three idiotic and steroid-pumped opportunists decide to take what they feel is owed to them in life. It claims to be based on a shocking true story, although the plot takes extreme liberties with the real-life events.

Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) is sculptured to perfection. He works at the gym where he feels he can help give anybody the body they want, and has helped his boss John Mese (Rob Corddry) turn the place around with a few smart business decisions. But his efforts have not given him the lifestyle he wants - a grand mansion, a top-of-the-range sports car, babes hanging off his massive arms, and every other materialistic pleasure life has to offer. He begins to lust after the kind of life lived by Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub), and so hatches a plan to extort the man for every penny he has after being inspired by motivational speaker Jonny Wu (Ken Jeong).

Along with the steroid-addled and impotency-stricken Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie), Daniel recruits enormous ex-convict and cocaine addict Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson) to assist him in kidnapping and torturing Kershaw until he signs over all of his assets to them. The plan works, but they fail to kill Kershaw after attempting to run him over numerous times. However, nobody believes his story of three imbeciles pulling off such a crime, choosing instead to believe it to be the result of dodgy dealings with criminal organisations. So Daniel, Paul and Adrian are allowed to live the lifestyle they have fantasised about, until they decide it isn't enough and plan to shake down smut peddler Frank Griga (Michael Rispoli), while Kershaw hires private investigator Ed DuBois (Ed Harris) to help him take back his property.

It's quite a change of genre for director Michael Bay, who has spent the last few years making billions at the box-office with huge explosions and CGI robots. While Pain & Gain does demonstrate a previously unseen knack for black comedy, Bay does not possess the necessary skills to tell a story of murder and greed with the required intelligence or satire. When we should be laughing at these preening narcissists, Bay films them with his usual sickly sheen as if to admire them, obscuring the point the film is, I think, trying to make. The decision to play the film mainly for laughs is also in somewhat bad taste. While watching a coked-up Johnson remove a victim's fingerprints by grilling their dismembered hands on a barbecue is the stuff of black comedy gold, you have to remember that there were real victims in this story, and it all happened quite recently.

The main positive is that the performances are all spot-on. Wahlberg is perfect as a man who values his self-worth by his possessions, and Johnson restrains himself enough in a role that could have spilled over into complete farce. A lot of the film is in fact farcical, and not in a good way. Bay insists of filling the screen with fancy wide-angled shots and outdated screen text, when a little dose of subtlety would have worked better. Yet despite its flaws and a bloated sub-plot involving Doorbal's relationship with the doctor who is injecting his penis with the necessary drugs to make it work properly (Rebel Wilson), Pain & Gain is pretty entertaining, and amusing enough to hope that Bay may think about taking a different direction to his usual blockbuster drivel (although he did make the appalling Transformers: Age of Extinction after this).


Directed by: Michael Bay
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Tony Shalhoub, Ed Harris, Rob Corddry, Bar Paly, Rebel Wilson
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie