Cars (2006)

Director: John Lasseter

Cast: Paul Newman, Owen Wilson, Bonnie Hunt, Larry the Cable Guy*

Have I Seen It Before: Yes. It’s wild that it has been a full twenty years—and I come to the film again now with its 20th anniversary re-release—since I got the end of this movie and decided that a full ten years of invariably great movies had to end some time. The best I could say about the film then was that Michael Keaton was, in fact, in it.

And as we all know by now: For me, that counts plenty.

Did I Like It: This time, I wound up watching it with a room full of children (fear not; at least some of them were related to me) and although that group will tend to chatter, each of them was pretty well enraptured by the film, so it may not matter what I think

I’m not sure how into the world of Cars I might be. I get lost in the bigger questions this film rightly won’t ever answer: If Lightning McQueen (Wilson) and Sally Carrera (Hunt) can have a romantic flirtation, and Lizzie (Katherine Helmond) was married to the founder of Radiator Springs, does that mean that the Cars of Planet Earth procreate? Does no one question why all creatures big and small—indeed, including bugs—have space within them for some other kind of creature to take a seat? They apparently have a deity, or deities, as one character exclaims something to “the manufacturer.” Yet, each car is clearly a different make and model. Does that mean the world of Cars is pantheistic? Did anybody tell Larry the Cable Guy about this before he was on the hook for three films? Was Lightning McQueen born without headlights, pre-destining him to a life as a race car? Was Lightning McQueen born?

Maybe I’m no longer in my twenties, but the lack of essential cleverness in the film kind of works for it now. A longing for a simpler time—when Route 66 was the beating heart of America—gives it all a sweetness, that this proponent of typewriters** and analog cinema projection can certainly relate to…

But seriously, was Lightning McQueen born? If he wasn’t, is he the fabled manufacturer. I’ll be happy to pitch Cars 4, whenever you’re ready, Pixar.

*Yeah, I’m not wild about having to type his full name, either. Even The Rock eventually started going by something other than the name fans first knew him by. I guess before that happens Mr. the Cable Guy would have to become a big movie star. On second thought, maybe I’m fine referring to him by his full name.

**Where’s Disney/Pixar’s Typewriters(tm), you cowards!?

Zoolander (2001)

Director: Ben Stiller

Cast: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Christine Taylor

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. In fact, as I was watching it, I was surprised to realize that bits of the movie had drifted into my vernacular over the years. Any time I hear the world derelict, I want to put the accent on the wrong syllable. Mer-man. Crazy pills. The film has far more sticking power than I would have thought.

Did I Like It: It’s humor still holds up reasonably well, which probably elevates it above many of the other comedies of the era. We may try to forget the movie after the rather odious sequel (a film I couldn’t even bring myself to finish) but giving it another shot is bound to give you some degree of enjoyment. It may not be at the level of some of Stiller’s other, more cerebral work like The Cable Guy (1996) or Severance, but if we judge every film for not having any sort of idea behind it, we probably wouldn’t watch much of anything anymore.

Now that we have that out of the way, here’s my one irretrievable problem with the movie. I’m not going to name any names*, but I was supremely not in any sort of mood to laugh after hearing from the fourth person in the movie to have any dialogue. You’ll know the moment when you see it**. He shows up in all sorts of movies during this era. And I can’t help but wonder if there is truly nothing—from the “On Our Own” music video from Ghostbusters II (1989) to Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air—that this guy can’t ruin just by showing up. That’s clearly not Stiller’s fault, but one wonders if those odious platforms designed to edit out any sort of adult content from films could actually be re-directed to doing something useful.

*If for no other reason than one does want to avoid getting into an equal time problem…

**If you don’t know the moment, then you may need to re-think large portions of your life.