I’ve been a big fan of Pixar since Toy Story. Every Pixar film I had seen was as equally beautiful to look at as it was engaging to the mind. A Bug’s Life was the weakest Pixar film I had seen and that still had a lot to like.

I finally saw Cars last night. When it was released to theaters my husband and I just couldn’t muster up enough interest to go see it. It wasn’t that we don’t like car stories - I still have a warm spot for Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch - but from what we saw in trailers and from what we heard and read in reviews, we weren’t interested in shelling out nearly $20 for a automated remake of Doc Hollywood.

I am so glad we didn’t spend the money then. I doubt it was a conscious remake of Doc Hollywood, but it was damn near close enough that Jeffrey Price, Peter S. Seaman and Daniel Pyne need a royalty check. Doc Hollywood itself wasn’t all that original but Cars has the following specific similarities:

An antagonist who:

• Is trying to get to California for purely selfish reasons
• Has no friends
• Is diverted from California by an incident with a diesel truck
• Arrives in a small town and causes damage to a fence among other things
• Has to serve time via community service
• After spending a night in an uncomfortable place is given a nicer place to stay
• Meets an older, wiser mentor that is referred to as ‘Doc’
• Meets an older, wiser mentor who has nothing but scorn for the young jerk
• Meets a colorful group of townies who have more personality than anyone he’s ever met before
• Meets the one pretty ‘girl’ in the town who is up to the antagonist’s standards, has spent time in the big city and decides that small town life is for her instead and is a student of law
• In the end the gets to California so that he has the chance to meet his goals
• Once in California realizes that it’s not what he really wants and decides to go back to the small town because of the friends he has made and, of course, that pretty girl

What Cars does not have is the charm and wit of the Doc Hollywood script and despite some good voice acting, the small town characters are not all that memorable and therefore do not condone any warm feelings for the viewer. Too much time is spent on the ‘dumb’ character of Mater who, despite the very annoying voice performance of Larry the Cable Guy, is the only townie the viewer even has a chance to like.

It also did not have a pig.

One of the things that really kept pulling my husband out of the film, and after a while myself, was the world itself. A world populated by cars is just kind of strange. Chris kept going on about why the cars had windshields if there was no one inside to be shielded. Those kind of things didn’t bother me - like I said, I used to watch Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch regularly - but what did bother me was the evidence of humans and yet the total lack of them.

I can buy that maybe cars could build their own roads and take care of themselves. I do not understand why in a world populated by nothing but machines there were food crops planted beside those roads. I know, not important to the story but the fact that those things were there - that someone made of point of creating them for the film - THAT bothers me.

The final, full impression I got from this movie is that someone wanted to render real countryside, maybe just to show off how well they could, not take any time to write anything witty or original but make sure it would be commercial. Therefore, throw in racing cars, NASCAR celebrity voices and nearly intolerable country music, ensuring that it would endear to the lowest common denominator in this country and - voila! - you have a mediocre money-maker.

A movie that is only memorable for its merchandising success.

I wonder how well it did overseas.