Category: Movies

Little-known fact: Alfonso Cuarón is The Man. And chances are, no matter what kinds of movies you prefer, you’ve seen The Man’s work. When he’s not making a Mexican road movie (“Y Tu Mama Tambien”) or reinterpreting Dickens (1998’s “Great Expectations”), you might find him making a movie about some British boy wizard “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” this writer’s personal favorite in the series to date). Amazingly, Cuarón walked away from the “Potter” series after making just one movie, though you’ll forgive him for doing so once you’ve seen the dazzling “Children of Men,” a brutal futuristic tale of life, interrupted.

The story takes place in London in the year 2027. The human race has become infertile, and the resulting effect on society has led to worldwide chaos. England, if the media is to be believed, is the last nation standing thanks to its being an island, but they are now faced with an overwhelming immigration problem. The country is a police state, and refugee camps abound. Ironically, none of this means anything to former activist Theo (Clive Owen), until his ex-wife Julian (Julianne Moore), who now works with one of the many underground immigrant movements, needs help in transporting a Jamaican girl named Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitley) out of the country and to the group the Human Project, which may or may not exist (their headquarters is on a boat in the ocean), without drawing attention. Julian’s reason: Kee is pregnant, and Julian fears that the government will dispose of her rather than use her to look for a way to cure mankind.

This is a special kind of futuristic sci-fi, one that is both modern (the billboards on the buses are digital video, and new technology still flourishes) and decimated (the streets look like Nazi-occupied Europe during WWII), which stands in stark contrast to the slick but dreary backdrops in movies like “Blade Runner” and “V for Vendetta.” Cuarón seems to be at home in both worlds, and proves it with a couple of massive one-take shots that are nothing short of spellbinding (to say more would spoil the fun).

Perhaps the most shocking thing about “Children of Men” is how the story morphs from a “Vendetta”-style fable about oppressive government to a startlingly anti-political (and possibly pro-religious; I haven’t read P.D. James’ book, so I’m not exactly sure) parable about loving thy neighbor. The subject matter may be bleak, but it is not without hope, which is rather timely given the book debuted 14 years ago. But perhaps these are just the words of a man who laughed at Michael Caine playing an aging drug dealer (“Can you taste the strawberry?”) who’s listening to either “Ruby Tuesday” or raucous hip-hop. While we’re on the subject, monster propers go to the supervisor of the soundtrack, which features King Crimson, Jarvis Cocker, Deep Purple and, God help me for missing this one during the movie, Junior Parker covering the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows.”

My Best of 2006 list would look a hell of a lot different had I seen “Children of Men” before now (now being January 3, 2007). The movie was meticulously shot and, while not as emotionally engrossing as I would have liked, it is still wildly compelling. Perhaps most importantly, it raises the stakes for all concerned, including the Spielbergs of the world, in terms of what a drama, a sci-fi flick, and a period piece can and should be. Like I said, Alfonso Cuarón is The Man.

If there was a spectrum of animated films, where the witty, high brow Pixar movies were on one end and the broad, stunt-casted DreamWorks Animation films were on the other, “Chicken Little” would fall dead in the center. It has a fresh visual style and keeps the bodily function jokes to a minimum (like Pixar), but they also stuffed the movie to the gills with pop song after pop song (a la “Shrek”), as well as recruiting voice talent from “The Simpsons,” “Family Guy,” Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries, and even a couple of Pixar veterans. It’s not a masterpiece, but it is an awful lot of fun, and an encouraging first CGI step for a studio that’s been eating cartoon dust of late.

Zach Braff voices the title character (which technically makes him Rooster Little, but we digress), an extremely resourceful young chicken who sends the town into a panic when he rings the bell in the school tower and tells everyone the sky is falling. When he is unable to find the piece of the sky that he saw fall, his father Buck Cluck (Garry Marshall) is naturally mortified, and tries to tell Chicken Little to lay low for a while. Chicken tries to abide by his father’s wishes, and even joins the baseball team (Buck was a star player in his day). But just when it seems that things are okay between father and son, another piece of the sky falls (on Chicken’s head, no less), and Chicken Little soon discovers something far more sinister is afoot. The problem is that aside from best buds Abby Mallard, a.k.a. Ugly Duckling (Joan Cusack) and Runt of the Litter (Steve Zahn), no one believes him, including his father. In traditional Disney fashion, Chicken Little’s mother, who surely would believe her only son, is dead.

Their choice of subject matter, as old as it may be, is a wise one from an animation standpoint, because it allowed them to fill the supporting cast with every animal you can think of, led by female bully Foxy Loxy (Amy Sedaris). This gives the movie a truly unique feel, even though the town that these animals call home looks like any other human city (except for the cars, which have a boxy, Warner Brothers feel to them). The alien chase sequences (don’t ask; the less you know, the better) are pretty thrilling for G-rated fare; kids under 5 will probably be a little spooked by them, but it’s resolved in a pretty friendly way. The dialogue isn’t going to put Kevin Smith or Quentin Tarantino out of a job – in fact, the number of people who received story and dialogue credits is in the double digits – but at least the humor isn’t loaded with sexual innuendo. There are other ways to keep the adults interested, and the writers here, thankfully, knew that (ahem, DreamWorks).

But what on earth possessed them to stuff this movie with so many pop songs? Sure, music is one of Runt’s defining characteristics (one long stretch of his dialogue is the entire chorus to a Carole King song), but is the scene that’s scored by REM’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” actually better off because of the song’s presence? Is the dodgeball scene (which is laugh-out-loud funny) improved by the inclusion of “Gonna Make You Sweat”? It should also be written in stone that the only good use of a Spice Girls song is an ironic one, like when the bad guys in “Small Soldiers” used “Wannabe” to torture the protagonists.

In the end, though, Disney gets the right things right. The movie is alternately funny, exciting, and sweet, and the cast, while somewhat overexposed in the world of animation (Wallace Shawn, Harry Shearer, Adam freaking West), is well chosen just the same. Sure, they made some very calculated moves to ensure that the movie would appeal to as many people as possible, but for the most part their decisions were good ones. One can only hope that they attack their next project with a little more confidence, instead of second guessing what would make a successful animated movie. Come on, guys, you’re Disney. Don’t you remember how to do this?

My lovely wife wrote this one. She’s good.

“Charlotte’s Web,” the live-action adaptation of E.B. White’s classic 1952 children’s novel, features not one, not two, but three talented performers in roles they were born to play.

Exhibit A: Julia Roberts, herself a new mother, voices the role of Charlotte, the kindly grey spider who befriends Wilbur – a young pig destined for the smokehouse – and devises a plan to save his life. Despite their differences in size and species, Charlotte acts as a surrogate mother to the lonely piglet, and her soothing tones help assuage his fears about the realities of farm life. All the same, Charlotte is no June Cleaver; her buttery voice belies a boundless reservoir of spunk – and it is that quality, as much as her kindness and ingenuity, that endears her to audiences. Roberts embodies these traits effortlessly, and turns a bloodsucking creepy-crawly into a creature of true beauty.

Exhibit B: Steve Buscemi, the go-to guy for shady low-life types, voices Templeton the rat. He eats pig slop. He lives in a dank hole littered with pilfered garbage. He looks out for no one but himself. Who better to voice this role than the guy who “doesn’t tip,” and who once found himself in the business end of a woodchipper? Buscemi’s voice is just as wheedling and squirmy as the rodent he portrays onscreen, sight and sound melding into a CGI character that is as real as any other in the film. Saddled with a few groaner punch lines early on, Buscemi overcomes the material and fully inhabits his character’s filthy heart…even granting it a flickering hint of redemption.

Exhibit C: Dakota Fanning, youngest-ever member of the Academy, all-around box-office ass-kicker, and source of deep insecurity among actresses 10 and 20 years her senior, plays the key human character in the story, young Fern Able. It is Fern who first rescues Wilbur from an untimely death, convincing her father not to kill the runt of the litter, and it is Fern who comes to visit Wilbur at her uncle’s farm every day once the pig has grown too big to live in her own home. While Fern’s role in the book is more pivotal than it is in the movie, and in any case is not nearly as interesting as most of the non-human characters in the story, what’s important is this: it’s the lead onscreen role in one of the most beloved children’s books of all time. Dakota Fanning is the right age, the right gender, has a staggering level of box office clout – and is actually a good actress, to boot. Seldom do the stars align so perfectly.

And speaking of stars: the rest of the talent involved are no slouches, either. The pedigreed cast rounding out the barnyard includes such luminaries as Oscar winners Robert Redford and Kathy Bates, plus Oprah Winfrey as fussy goose Gussy. John Cleese brings his stiff upper lip to the role of Samuel, the sheep who would be more than just a follower, and Thomas Haden Church provides great comic relief as one of the few new characters in the movie, a crow named Brooks who is constantly thwarted in his quest for corn.

Ironically, despite their already talent-stacked deck, Paramount apparently pressured the film’s producers to land a “name” actor to voice the central role of Wilbur. Instead, they wisely went with Dominic Scott Kay…and the film is better off for it. Placing an unknown in the role of the youngster in jeopardy gives the character an extra layer of vulnerability – especially when surrounded, as he is, by older and more established talent. Kay gives Wilbur just the right mix of youthful exuberance, naiveté, and trepidation, and creates a character audiences can’t help rooting for – no matter how much they might love bacon.

When casting choices this magical are combined with an endearing, enduring classic, the result can only be described with a word that appears in one of Charlotte’s miraculous webs: terrific.

So let’s get this straight: in late-1920s Los Angeles, the young son of a working single mother disappears. Months later the police, desperate for a good headline because they’re corrupt and lazy, tell the mother they found her child, only it’s not her child. When she tells them they made a mistake, they force her to take the child and tell her that she’s imagining things. When she refuses to let it go, they lock her away in a psycho ward. At this point, some grisly details involving another juvenile case come into light, suggesting that the missing pieces to the story are even worse than the ones they’ve already uncovered.

Who the hell wants to see that movie?

It’s the cheapest form of manipulation there is – threatening the lives of children. If it were a political attack ad, they’d call it fearmongering, and that’s “Changeling” in a nutshell. The events behind the story may be true, and that is tragic, along with being a tad ridiculous (you’ve never seen such a one-sided movie in your life). Watching the dramatization of those events, though, isn’t electrifying, or gripping, or heart-wrenching, or any of those Oscar-friendly buzz words usually associated with this kind of movie; it’s miserable.

Angelina Jolie is the single mother, named Christine Collins, and when she’s called in to work on an off day, her son Walter (Gattlin Griffith) is not there when she comes home. Five months later, she is told that the police have picked up a boy in Illinois that matches Walter’s description, but when Christine goes to meet him at the train station – surrounded by reporters at the behest of a police department desperate to get some good ink – Christine tells the police that the boy is not her son and they, fearing public embarrassment, force to take the child anyway. Her primary dealings from there are with the extremely powerful LAPD Captain J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan), and despite some rather substantial evidence proving this boy they found is not Walter, he chooses to vilify Christine as an unfit mother with mental problems. When Christine refuses to relent, Jones ships her off to a psycho ward as a Code 12 patient. It is here that she meets Carol Dexter (Amy Ryan), another Code 12 patient who shows her how to survive inside the nut house. Meanwhile, on the outside, local pastor and anti-corruption activist Gustav Brieglab (John Malkovich) is fighting to get Christine justice, while LA’s last good cop, Lester Ybarra (Michael Kelly), follows a tip on a missing child from Canada, and makes a shocking discovery.

This is every mother’s worst nightmare of a movie, which again begs the question: who on earth would pay good money to subject themselves to this kind of misery? Is there anything good to take from the experience? Meanwhile, the LAPD are so corrupt and blind to their egregious mistake that it’s like watching John Waters as the hypno-therapist in “Hairspray” (the original, not the musical remake), more cartoon than struggle against authority. The only way it could be more cartoonish is if Christine’s only hope for escape was to get Jones to say his name backwards.

Sure, director Clint Eastwood makes it look good (and sound good, as he scored the movie as well), and Jolie handles the whole Mother, Interrupted thing with the right balance of reserve and heartbreak, but that does not make “Changeling” any less insufferable. There is no feeling of relief or sense of justice when it’s all over; just exasperation that it took that much effort for common sense to prevail. There are also a couple key threads that are dropped in favor of poking the audience with a sharp stick (what about the neighbors that were supposed to check up on Walter, or the boy’s claim that the police coached him?), and when all is said and done – some 140 minutes later – “Changeling” is a damning indictment of the sexist conditions of a time that few people are alive today to remember. Perhaps it’s better that way.

God help us, we’re all the way down to the ‘switched bodies’ plot getting a raunchy makeover, as if anyone asked for that. To be fair, “The Change-Up” had the potential to be much better than it is, but the filmmakers clearly mistook raunchiness for a complete lack of restraint. Fools. The best raunch-coms are the ones that know those two ideas are not mutually exclusive.

Dave (Jason Bateman) and Mitch (Ryan Reynolds) have been friends since childhood, which might explain why there’s still a connection, if a bit tenuous, as they reach their late 30s. Dave is a successful lawyer with lovely wife Jamie (Leslie Mann) and three kids, while foul-mouthed Mitch gets baked all day and auditions for roles in bad movies. Dave envies Mitch’s freedom, while Mitch wants Dave’s success. After a night a booze-fueled fun, the two relieve themselves in a fountain, each wishing to be the other. The next morning, they get their wish, and quickly realize just how difficult each other’s life is. The more difficult aspect of the switcheroo, though, is finding out how their loved ones truly feel about them, not to mention how each honestly feels about the other.

This whole raunch-com thing has been fun, hasn’t it? The problem is that six years into the movement (we’re counting 2005’s “Wedding Crashers” as the one that started this), it’s all been done, and now everyone’s stooping to embarrassing lows to come up with something that no one else has done yet, without considering whether or not it’s a good idea. Like, say, having a baby shit directly into someone’s mouth….in the opening scene. The other problem with the humor is that it just doesn’t make sense. At one point, Mitch and Dave try to convince a skeptical Jamie of the switch, so Dave (as Mitch) tells a story that only he would know, only he chooses a story so embarrassing to Jamie that she slaps Mitch (as Dave) for betraying her trust. (Any husband will tell you that this would never happen.) Also, don’t you think it would occur to Mitch to tell Dave that the girl coming to screw his brains out is ten months pregnant? And is any grown-up so dense that they’d put infants on a kitchen counter next to the knife block? Lazy, lazy, lazy.

And that’s a pity, because the two leads are having a field day with the material. Jason Bateman, the hardest working straight man in show business, lets it all hang out here, and while Reynolds sells the Mitch character much better, it’s fun to see Bateman step outside of his comfort zone and act like, well, a douche. Reynolds, however, has the better role, because he gets the quick laughs up front as himbo Mitch and then inherits the far better character arc as trapped Dave. Leslie Mann plays the shrill harpy far too often for someone with her comedic abilities, and while Jamie spends most of the movie veering between ill-tempered and heartbroken, she gets a couple of chances to show her stuff (and breasts, which was surprising). Olivia Wilde arguably has the most fun, though, getting to play both business professional and bad girl while being herself the entire time.

David Fincher’s “Se7en” is one of the most disturbing thrillers of all time, and the main reason for that is because of what it doesn’t show; the movie knows that the audience will come up with something far worse than anything they could put on screen. “The Change-Up” would have greatly benefited from that mindset. Instead of showing everything, how about teasing the audience a little? To paraphrase Patton Oswalt, the majority of the present-day raunch-coms all about coulda, not shoulda (again, see: baby shitting in someone’s mouth). “The Change-Up” could have used a whole lot more shoulda.

It’s easy to tell when a second unit director or director of photography is making his directorial debut – Bruce Hunt, DP on the “Matrix” movies, please step forward – because everything looks fantastic, but it doesn’t mean anything. “The Cave” is such a movie. It was clearly a costly shoot, with a majority of the action taking place underwater, and James Cameron will tell you all about shooting underwater. To its credit, the underwater shots look nice. In fact, they’re stunning. But thanks to a script that looks like no human hands touched it at any point, those elegant diving shots are wasted. Thrillers aren’t terribly thrilling when you’re actually rooting for the monsters to knock the humans off.

The setup: a group of the prettiest divers you’ll ever meet are commissioned to explore a cave in the mountains of Romania that sits beneath the ruins of a church. It’s a deep drop, combined with a long tunnel, and no one is expecting to hear from them for twelve days. The divers are simply trying to graph the tunnels for research purposes, but soon discover that they have company in the form of a nasty bat/Alien hybrid. Their leader, Jack (Cole Hauser), survives an attack from one of the creatures, but the parasites in its blood stream infect Jack, giving him the acute sense of hearing the creatures have. The group is unsure whether they can trust him, and a group that was already having trouble standing up to these baddies now has to face off against each other as well.

None of this, of course, will matter to you, because it clearly didn’t matter to the filmmakers to create any characters worth giving a damn about. The character development, as it were, is laughable; the actors did not need to ask themselves what their character’s motives were, because it went no deeper than, “I’m a scientist,” “I’m arrogant,” or “I’m still trying to earn my brother’s respect, even if he’s turning into an Alien bat.” There are also a series of blind drops into rapids and ice caves (the hills of Romania, it appears, are both boiling hot and ice cold) that should have turned the group into bags of bones. Remarkably, few sustain lingering injuries.

It’s maddening to think that movies like this continue to get made these days. How does this get past the pitch phase, especially when there is not a single original idea in the premise? This has all been done before, and better, in “Alien,” “Predator,” “Pitch Black,” and even “Anaconda.” If Hollywood is truly eager to find out why they’re suffering such a horrible slump, this would be a good place to start.

It’s shocking that this movie didn’t find a larger audience, given that it’s the “Facebook movie” that its users can best relate to. A New York photographer begins to receive correspondence from a young girl in Michigan, and soon is in tight with her family on Facebook. It is here that he meets the girl’s older sister, and…well, we really can’t say anything more than that, but let’s just say that roughly two dozen “Wow” moments follow. Unfortunately, in this post-“I’m Still Here” world, the nagging question of whether the movie’s events are real lingers over everything that happens after the 25-minute mark. (The filmmakers and its star admit that it looks a little too perfect, but insist that they simply got lucky and the story is 100% true.) This does not distract from what is a truly fascinating story, even if it does play its hand a bit too early (again, at the 25-minute mark). We’d say more, but really, this is one you just have to experience for yourself.

This was an interesting one to re-read 12 years after I wrote it. I was embracing the whole ‘writing for a men’s site’ thing (Bullz-Eye), and the ending is the sort of thing I would never write today. I still stand by the sentiment, though.

“Casanova” is absolutely better than I expected. It’s funny, clever, charming, sweet, and just screwball enough to be plausibly zany without being ridiculous. Well, okay, until the third act, where it just goes batshit crazy, but up to that point, the movie is everything that well done romantic comedies should be, and then some. Comparisons to “Shakespeare in Love” are inevitable, and while it isn’t better than that, it’s not exactly trying to be, regardless of the myriad of similar themes.

Heath Ledger plays the title character, the infamous libertine who bedded more damsels than both Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons at a time when the Inquisition ruled Europe (the action takes place in Italy), and Casanova’s crimes were punishable by death. After a narrow escape from the Inquisition, Casanova is advised to put on a front that he has reformed, and seeks out Victoria (Natalie Dormer), the renowned virgin of Venice, as his pretend fiancé to be. This greatly offends Giovanni Bruni (Charlie Cox), Victoria’s neighbor and secret admirer, and Giovanni challenges Casanova to a duel. This is where things get tricky.

Casanova assumes an alias in his encounter with Giovanni, and after the duel reaches its conclusion, Casanova meets Giovanni’s sister Francesca (Sienna Miller), who’s betrothed to marry Paprizzio (Oliver Platt), a wealthy lard magnate from Genoa. Francesca is uncommonly smart (she pulls a stunt earlier in the movie that is considered an act of witchcraft), and is impervious to Casanova’s charms, which of course makes her all the more desirable to him. Her mother, Andrea (Lena Olin), however, will not allow her to back out of her arranged marriage – they’re broke, and Paprizzio is loaded – so Casanova, with the help of his servant Lupo (Omid Djalili), pulls a scheme to hide Paprizzio away in his apartment, under the guise that Casanova is Paprizzio. Hilarity ensues, along with a fair share of chaos.

The best example that you will ever find of just how Puritanical we are as a society is the fact that this movie carries an R rating. There is no foul language, and there is no nudity. There is, however, an abundance of adult situations, as they used to call them in the old HBO days. Okay, there’s one brief, non-nude sex scene and an implied blowjob scene, but so what? “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” had a blowjob scene more overt than the one in this movie. Jeez Louise. Let’s not get hysterical here, people.

Ledger’s job here is actually quite simple; he just has to flash that devilish grin. Miller’s job is simple, too; she just has to read her lines in such a way that she comes off as inquisitive and intriguing, but not arrogant. She doesn’t even need to be the most attractive love interest (that job is Dormer’s), so talk about coasting on personality. The supporting characters are the money roles here, where Djalili makes a star turn as Casanova’s servant, and the luscious Dormer is a pitch-perfect blend of virtuosity and billy goat horniness. Jeremy Irons has a little fun as the Grand Pooh Bah inquisitor Pucci, but plays the buffoon before too long. And God love Oliver Platt, whose Paprizzio would normally be a villain, but wisely is spun into something far better than you would expect.

So yeah, that third act: it’s just nutty. How nutty, I unfortunately can’t say without revealing too much, but the whole thing smacks of a rewrite. The jokes are a little easier (read: dumber), and the situations are downright cartoonish. It doesn’t sink the movie the way, say, “War of the Worlds” fell on its sword in its third act, but for a movie that was delivering big time goods, its ending was less than stellar.

Your girlfriend/wife/mistress is going to beg you to go see “Casanova.” And you’ll be really, really glad you went along. Sure, the ending of the movie isn’t “The Usual Suspects,” but the ending of your evening will likely be something out of “Debbie Does Dallas.” Any questions?

“Cars 2” is more entertaining than the 2006 original, but it damn well better be. “Cars” is the weakest movie in Pixar history, and this movie, when compared to the rest of Pixar’s titles, still ranks no higher than the second-weakest or third-weakest movie in Pixar history. It looks fantastic, and contains some nifty action sequences, but the story, quite frankly, is beneath them.

Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) is looking forward to taking some time away from the racing circuit to hang out with his friends in Radiator Springs, but he is goaded into joining a three-stage, bi-continental race by energy magnate Sir Miles Axlerod (Eddie Izzard) and hotshot Formula One driver Francesco Bernoulli (a very funny John Turturro). Lightning decides to take his best friend Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) with him, and during the Tokyo stage, Mater embarrasses Lightning in front of his more refined racer friends, while being mistaken for an undercover American spy by British secret agent Finn McMissile (Michael Caine). Soon Mater is off assisting Finn and Holly Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer) on a secret mission, and before long they discover that their mission involves McQueen and the other drivers in the World Grand Prix, and a plot to destroy them.

Here is the most important thing you need to know about this movie: Larry the Cable Guy has top billing. Larry actually turned in a nice performance as a supporting character in the original, but making him top banana…oh, how do we put this delicately…it makes for a dumber movie. They can put all of the spy gadgets and gearhead talk – and they supply plenty of both – as they want, but in the end, this is a slightly smarter version of one of Larry the Cable Guy’s live action movies, which is to say, still not terribly smart. The kids will love it. Grown-ups’ results will definitely vary.

Caine and Mortimer do a good job keeping the spy element interesting (even if the mystery itself would make Scooby Doo blush), and the Toyko sequence contains some great bits, especially the Japanese game show clip. That story, though, is death. Between the boatloads of exposition and the entire spy plot hanging on the four words Mater doesn’t say (you know what they are), there are few of Pixar’s trademark story elements in play. If anything, it’s a lot like “Megamind” or DreamWorks’ other non-“Kung Fu Panda” movies – it’s noisier than it is fun. And if you must see this film, for God’s sake do not under any circumstances see it in 3D. There is hardly anything 3D about it.

You can’t help but feel sorry for John Lasseter and the Pixar crew. They surely know that “Cars” is their worst movie, but from a merchandising standpoint, it’s just under “Toy Story” on the cash cow scale. They had to make a second “Cars” movie, and it must have killed them to know that they could never inject “Cars 2” with the emotional depth of “Up” or “WALL·E” or the smarts of “The Incredibles.” Transforming it from a road movie to a spy movie was a good idea, though. Making Mater the star, however, was not.

For the first time in their history, Pixar blinked. “Cars,” the last movie in the original distribution deal between Disney and Pixar and the first to be directed by John Lasseter since 1999’s “Toy Story 2,” certainly looks like a Pixar movie, but it doesn’t feel like one. It feels like one of Pixar’s less imaginative rivals trying to make a Pixar movie, but falling into the tired trappings that Pixar, up to this point, has deftly avoided. It is also two hours long, which is about 30 minutes longer than it needs to be.

The movie begins with the souped up Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson), a fan favorite on the racing circuit, blowing a lead in his latest race because he refused, once again, to listen to his pit crew chief. The race ends in a three-way tie between Lightning, the obnoxious Chick Hicks (Michael Keaton) and racing legend “The King” (real life racing legend Richard Petty), and they must all travel to California for a tiebreaker. Lightning insists that his carrier, a semi truck named Mack (John Ratzenberger, of course), drive straight through to California, which results in Mack falling asleep at the wheel, and Lightning sliding out of the back of the truck, finding himself in run-down Radiator Springs. After a mishap wrecks the town’s main road, the local judge Doc Hudson (Paul Newman) orders Lightning to repave the road. While performing his community service, he befriends tow truck Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), and falls for the local attorney and motel operator Sally (Bonnie Hunt).

There’s a sweet story in here, one that teaches children the importance of being a good person over being a famous or important one, and reminds them to take in the surroundings rather than spending your life racing from point A to point B. The execution of it, however, is deliberate and tedious. In fact, nearly every Pixar taboo is violated here, from the marketing of the voice talent – something Brad Bird, director of “The Incredibles,” denounced in an interview with “Entertainment Weekly” – to the use of a pop soundtrack instead of a score (no one, repeat, no one asked for Rascal Flatts to cover “Life Is a Highway”). Lastly, there’s the casting of the voice talent, which brings new meaning to the terms ‘old school’ and ‘stereotypical.’ George Carlin is a hippie VW van who sells organic fuel. Cheech Marin’s Ramone runs a detail shop and has a new paint job in every scene. I’m sure these characters were created as amusement for the grownups as they take their tykes to see the movie, but it feels lazy this time, like they didn’t really put much thought into, well, anything. Not only is it overlong, but “Cars” is sorely missing the comedic punch and energy that makes Pixar movies hold up to repeat viewings. And I won’t even discuss the ending, where the movie becomes surprisingly self-referential and takes some painfully easy jokes.

The one thing they did get right, though, is the voice direction. The performances from the leads are all great, with even Larry the Cable Guy showing some dramatic chops. Paul Newman, however, sounds less like himself and more like Lawrence Tierney (a.k.a. Joe, the guy who assigned the names in “Reservoir Dogs”). The movie looks fantastic, too, with a couple stunning shots during Sally and Lightning’s trip into the countryside. But Pixar has always been a story-first studio; it is expected of them that things will look great. Where they excel is how their movies make you feel, and this one didn’t make me feel much of anything.

It is an interesting turn of events that “Cars,” with its top-heavy voice talent, pop soundtrack, and half-hearted in-jokes, plays out more like a DreamWorks Animation movie, while “Over the Hedge,” the most recent (and far superior) movie released by DreamWorks, has the spirit and energy of a Pixar movie. Looks like your secret’s out, Pixar. Now quit fretting about it and start making good movies again. –