The Pixar people, director John Lasseter in particular, envision a world of cars without people (Mommy, where do cars come from?), but of course anthropomorphized cars, such that the windshields are eyes and the hoods, grilles, and front bumpers form noses and mouths. The vision focusses chiefly on a hot-shot rookie race car called Lightning McQueen, who, en route to the Piston Cup championship on the West Coast, gets stalled in the sleepy little backwater of Radiator Springs (soon christened "Hillbilly Hell") off Route 66 ("the Mother Road"), which time and the interstate have passed by. Whether or not you can steer around the irony, or hypocrisy, or cynicism, or what-you-will, of a computer cartoon waxing nostalgic over the slower pace and simpler ways of the Good Old Days, this is one of the better specimens of this type of animation, the airless, vacuum-sealed, climate-controlled, machine-tooled type. The clean, sleek, toylike shapes of the vehicles (straight out of an old Chevron commercial) are easily handled, and their personalities inventively differentiated. The town itself is wittily detailed: the single flashing yellow light on Main Street, the caution-cone motel cabins, the geodesic-dome garage for the psychedelic hippie van, etc. And, outside of the herd of flatulent tractors, the sense of humor refrains from the off-color. And having to listen to Owen Wilson is much preferable to having to look at him at the same time. Paul Newman, a racing enthusiast in real life, could be said to be well cast as the voice of the legendary Hudson Hornet, Piston Cup champ from 1951 to '53, who chose to put himself out to pasture at the height of his powers and to live out his years in peaceful obscurity. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd
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