Empty Pleasure

Cars

Directed by John Lasseter

The best sequence in Cars, Pixar's overwrought animated trifle, is the most extraneous. Citizens in a desert town recall its past: a nighttime, neon-lit, 1950s paradise where sleek automobiles cruised the boulevard to the tune of The Chords' "Sh-Boom." It's the only sequence with an appreciable sense of beauty, but the formulaic story has nothing to do with that melancholy ache for technology and manufacturing which was more imaginatively conveyed in last year's, often ingenious, Robots. What makes director John Lasseter's three-minute homage to American Graffiti extraneous is that its glow and poignance was already bested by Wim Wenders' realistic use of neon in Don't Come Knocking. Wenders more complexly visualized how American pop culture could be both stimulating and simultaneously mechanical and alienating. Lasseter's cartoony fantasy adds nothing to that insight.

The problem is that Cars, unlike Robots, settles for a childish idea of anthropomorphism. Pixar's plot (yawn) concerns an arrogant red racing car (voiced by Owen Wilson) who winds up in a junkyard of a ghost town where long-forgotten vehicles (voiced by Paul Newman, Jenifer Lewis, Tony Shalhoub, etc., represent various ethnic stereotypes) teach him about teamwork and friendship-you know, Toy Story XIV.

Pixar's all about American product. Sure, the snub-nosed vehicles are cute, turning the screen into the largest-ever model car collection, but so what? Lasseter's vistas of toy-car characters in a desert landscape suggest excitement for Western expansionism and 20th century ingenuity, yet teach nothing about today's capitalist-imperialist hysteria. It's unearned nostalgia. The rest of the America-hating world will probably look at this strange, bright, digital confection and feel more of their usual envy. But we privileged Yanks can look at Cars feeling both mildly amused and bored by its emptiness.