Synopsis

Lightning McQueen, a hotshot rookie race car driven to succeed, discovers that life is about the journey, not the finish line, when he finds himself unexpectedly detoured in the sleepy Route 66 town of Radiator Springs. En route across the country to the big Piston Cup Championship in California to compete against two seasoned pro racers The King and Chick Hicks, McQueen gets to know the town's offbeat characters including Doc Hudson, Sally Carrera, and Mater who help him realize that there are more important things than trophies, fame, and sponsorship. "Cars" is a Pixar Animation Studios film presented by Walt Disney Pictures. It's a high octane delight for moviegoers of all ages, fueled with plenty of humor, action, heartfelt drama, and amazing new technical feats. Adding to the fun is a score featuring new songs by Randy Newman plus old favourites like "Route 66" and more.

What The Critics Say

"Fueled with plenty of humor, action, heartfelt drama, and amazing new technical feats, Cars is a high octane delight for moviegoers of all ages." Peter Travers ROLLING STONE "Pixar throws us another phenomenal animated film that is as fun to watch as it is beautiful to look at." Danny Minton, BEAUMONT JOURNAL "Inventive and witty, Cars is a well oiled Pixar movie-machine that deserves its victory lap." Andrew L Urban URBAN CINEFILE "Pixar has done it again, Cars is a super charged classic combining a well constructed and finely tuned emotional story with state of the art computer animation. Cars is a real winner in which the past and future come together in a homage to the great American road trip." Jaimie Leonarder SBS THE MOVIE SHOW

"The ingredients that have made Pixar-Disney animations such pure delight and box-office bonanza are evident in Cars, a technically impressive, vastly entertaining and emotionally heartfelt feature in which the metallic protags are full of life and energy." Emanuel Levy EMANUELLEVY.COM "After a half-dozen feature films -- not one flop among them -- Lassater and his team certainly know how to construct a story." Annlee Ellingson BOXOFFICE MAGAZINE "Existing both in turbo-charged today and the gentler '50s, straddling the realms of Pixar styling and old Disney heart, this new-model Cars is an instant classic." Richard Corliss TIME MAGAZINE "Cars is a brilliantly executed movie with a well tuned screenplay built on the simple but evergreen character elements that gave old Hollywood its golden glow: decent human values. The good, the badly mangled and the ugly are all embraced as valuable members of the community, and winning hearts earns greater status than winning prizes." Andrew L Urban URBAN CINEFILE

The Inside Story The release of the animated film "Cars" coincides with the celebration of Pixar Studios 20th anniversary, and what a celebration it must be. Disney recently acquired the company in an all-stock deal worth a massive $US 7.4 billion. "We welcome and embrace Pixar's unique culture, which for two decades has fostered some of the most innovative and successful films in history," Disney Chief Executive Officer Robert Iger said in a statement. "The addition of Pixar significantly enhances Disney animation, which is a critical creative engine for driving growth across our businesses." Pixar Chairman and CEO Steve Jobs who will take a place on Disney’s Board of Directors as a non-independent member says, "Disney and Pixar can now collaborate without the barriers that come from two different companies with two different sets of shareholders. Now, everyone can focus on what is most important, creating innovative stories, characters and films that delight millions of people around the world." That word 'delight' has been the key to success for Pixar Studios. In twenty years Pixar has brought great joy to cinemagoers of all ages and nationalities through its critically acclaimed productions such as: "Toy Story 1 & 2", "A Bug's Life", "Monsters, Inc.", "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles". Now they are set to do it all again for their new owners with their latest animated production, "Cars" which features some outstanding work by the Pixar team under the direction of Academy Award winner and new Chief Creative Officer John A Lasseter who now faces the challenge of reviving Disney's weakened animation unit. Lasseter remembers when as a boy growing up in Whittier, California he would visit his father who was the Parts Department Manager at the local chevrolet dealership. Lasseter couldn't wait to turn sixteen and when he did he got a job as a stock boy working alongside his father. "I have always loved cars," he said. "In one vein, I have Disney blood, and in the other, there’s motor oil. The notion of combining these two great passions in my life, cars and animation, was irresistible. When Joe and I first started talking about this film in 1998, we knew we wanted to do something with cars as characters." Lasseter says what really aroused his and Joe Ranft's interest was watching a documentary called "Divided Highways" which he recalls, "focussed on the interstate highway and how it affected the small towns along the way. We were so moved by it and began thinking about what it must have been like in these small towns that got bypassed. That’s when we started really researching Route 66, but we still hadn’t quite figured out what the story for the film was going to be. I used to travel that highway with my family as a child when we visited our family in St Louis." The next critical point in the story of "Cars" came in 2001 when Lasseters wife Nancy "persuaded him to take a much-needed vacation. Nancy said to me that if I didn’t slow down and start paying attention to the family, the kids would be going off to college before I knew it and I would be missing a huge part of our family life. And she was right!" taking that trip off the interstae highway provided a real revelation for Lasseter." When I came back from the trip, I was closer to my family than ever and I reattached to what was important in life. And I suddenly realized that I knew what the film needed to be about. I discovered that the journey in life is the reward. It’s great to achieve things, but when you do you want to have your family and friends around to help celebrate." That lead to a nine day trip along the famous 'Route 66'. Lasseter, Ranft, producer Darla Anderson, production designers Bob Pauley and Bill Cone and other key production members took a flight to Oklahoma City and then with historian and author Michael Wallis onboard as tour leader, set out in four white Cadillacs on a trip that would introduce them to the people and places that make that road so very special. "On our research trip, we went to the cafes and mom-and-pop shops, and motels along the way. We talked to hitchhikers, cowboys, waitresses and mechanics. We met a lot of interesting characters along the way," recalls Wallis. "If you’re a real road warrior and you know the old highway, you will be pleased, because the film is going to remind you of places and people you might know on the Mother Road." For "Cars", more than 100 unique car characters were created. "We really worked hard to make this world believable," Lasseter said. "It took many months of trial and error, and practicing test animation, to figure out how each car moves and how their world works. Our supervising animators, Doug Sweetland and Scott Clark, and the directing animators, Bobby Podesta and James Ford Murphy, did an amazing job working with the animation team to determine the unique movements for each character based on its age and the type of car it was." With no human faces in the film there were some important factors to consider. One was the "Cars" eyes. "From the very beginning of this project, John had it in his mind to have the eyes be in the windshield," says production designer Bob Pauley. "For one thing, it separates our characters from the more common approach where you have little cartoon eyes in the headlights. For another, he thought that having the eyes down near the mouth at the front end of the car made the character feel more like a snake. With the eyes set in the windshield, the point of view is more human-like, and made it feel like the whole car could be involved in the animation of the character." It wasn't the only challenge facing the production team. "Getting a full range of performance and emotion from these characters and making them still seem like cars was a tough assignment, but that’s what animation does best," says supervising animator Scott Clark. "You use your imagination, and you make the movements and gestures fit with the design. Our car characters may not have arms and legs, but we can lean the tires in or out to suggest hands opening up or closing in. We can use steering to point a certain direction. We also designed a special eyelid and an eyebrow for the windshield that lets us communicate an expressiveness that cars don’t have." The array of "Cars" characters seen on the screen are just sensational, but what makes them even better is the voice cast who bring them to life. "I loved going up to their Studio because it was such a great place to hang out," says the voice of Lightning McQueen, Owen Wilson. "It’s a creative fun atmosphere with people skateboarding around, and playing ping pong and foosball." Foosball? It's a table with 8 rods and 'table soccer' figures. "When I first got the call asking if I’d be interested in doing an animated feature for Pixar about race cars in which I played a 1951 Hudson Hornet, I told them I found the combination irresistible," says Academy Award ® winner Paul Newman. "I hadn’t seen a script or anything, I just knew it was Pixar, it was Lasseter, and it was about racing. Those are the three ingredients that I was familiar with." "Sally was a big hot shot attorney living life in the fast lane in California. And she took a drive on Route 66. Her car broke down and she stayed in this small town and found what was really meaningful in her life," says actress, comedian, writer, director and television producer Bonnie Lynn Hunt who voices the love interest in "Cars". "I knew that she was somebody who used to be tough, and tried to keep up the pace of her life. She slowed down when she got to Radiator Springs and it made her a little softer, so I thought her voice would be a little softer." One character in "Cars" everyone will love is the backwards-driving tow truck named Mater. "I love all of Pixar’s movies and stuff," says Larry The Cable Guy, voice of the lovable little tow truck. "I was sittin’ in the house one day and I got a phone call. And they said, 'Hey, wanna be in one a those Pixar/Disney movies?' And I'm like, 'Yeah. I’d love to.' When I got the fax saying it was a done deal, I said, 'No way. Ya gotta be kiddin' me.' I thought it was going to be some little teeny tiny part. But, man, it ended up bein’ one of the big characters in the film. It was pretty cool. I hadn’t been that excited since I found a vision of the Virgin Mary in some potato salad at a picnic." I'm sure that cinemagoers too will be excited when they get to see "Cars". The Verdict "All I can say is 'thank goodness for Pixar Studios'. "Cars" is a cute, heart warming, loveable experience that really does lift the spirit. The animation is stunning and the storyline is without a doubt, absolutely first class. The voice cast do a superb job and in this pressure cooker society we all live in, there's a good lesson in life to be learnt from "Cars". Highly recommended to everyone no matter what your age. 4 STARS." Voice Cast Bytes "CARS" stars the voices of .......
Owen Wilson ["Shanghai Noon", "The Royal Tenenbaums", "Shanghai Knights", "Meet The Fockers" and "Wedding Crashers"]; Bonnie Hunt ["A Bug's Life", "The Green Mile", "Monsters, Inc" and "Cheaper by the Dozen 1 & 2"]; Michael Keaton ["Desperate Measures", "White Noise" and "Herbie Fully Loaded"]; Cheech Marin ["Desperado", "Pinocchio", "SpyKids I, II & III" and "Once Upon a Time in Mexico"], Jay Leno ["Collision Course", "Robots" and "Ice Age 2: The Meltdown"] and Academy Award ® and Golden Globe Award winner Paul Newman ["The Towering Inferno", "Fort Apache the Bronx", "The Hudsucker Proxy" and "Road to Perdition"] as Doc Hudson. Crew Bytes "CARS" was .......
directed by Academy Award ® winner John Lasseter ["Lady & The Lamp", "Red's Dream", "A Bug's Life" and "Toy Story 1 & 2"]; story by Joe Ranft ["The Brave Little Toaster", "The Lion King" and "Fantasia/2000"], screenplay by Dan Fogelman [TV Series "Like Family"], Phil Lorin ["Cars"] and Kiel Murray ["Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles"]; editing by Ken Schretzmann ["Sexual Intent", "The Modern Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "Cause N' Defect"]; original music by Academy Award ® and EMMY Award winner Randy Newman ["A Bug's Life" "Monsters, Inc", "Seabiscuit" and "Meet the Fockers"] produced by Darla K Anderson ["A Bug's Life" and "Monsters, Inc"]. Run Time 120 minutes Rated G [AUST] Copyright ©2006 - Disney Films & Pixar Studios - All Rights Reserved Copyright Protected © 2006 - The Movie Pages & Impact Internet Services - All Rights Reserved