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The movie is the typical feel good Disney movie but is well hidden by the writing of it. You don’t realize that you’ve been suckered into it till it’s too late. The movie is centered on Lightning McQueen, an arrogant, self-absorbed rookie racing in the Piston Cup Championship. After finishing in a three way tie with The King (Richard Petty) and Chick Hicks (Michael Keaton) in the final race of the regular season, he hurries off to California for a final showdown race to decide who is champion and who will be sponsored by the big company Dinoco after The King retires. McQueen gets separated from his transport Mack (John Ratzenberger) and finds himself holed up in a small town on Route 66 called Radiator Springs. Here he starts to find himself and find out that there is more to life then Go, Go, Go. After trying to get out of having to repave the road, and trying to get out of town to make it to the big race, he eventually figures out what it means to have real friends and to slow down and “smell the roses” for lack of better term. This movie is a great lesson to all of us. Unfortunately, our society is too much about the destination and how fast we can get from point A to point B and not about the journey to get there.That is the premise of this whole movie. And you can actually see the changes of McQueen and the others around him as the movie continues forward. Eventually, McQueen does make it to California for the final race, but ends up losing because he decides to help The King by pushing him to the finish line, instead of finishing it first himself, (Another moral theme of the movie) and of course is rewarded with the sponsorship of Dinoco because of it. (Instead of Chick Hicks who cheated and taken out The King making Hicks the actual winner of the final race.) There is a lot of “adult” humor and “kid” humor. What I mean by “adult” humor is along the same lines of a Bugs Bunny short. Humor that kids will find funny but won’t necessarily “get” but will definitely get a chuckle out of an adult. I’m referring to such incidents like the Jr. and Richard Petty sequences, or any of the other voices that are featured in the movie from NASCAR fame, or George Carlin’s character Fillmore who is a hippy VW van. The special features are definitely worth watching, unlike so many movies. In fact, the biggest disappointment of them is that I don’t think there is enough. I really wish they would have done a two disc special edition like they had done to most of their DVD releases up to this point. Included are the two short films, One Man Band, and Mater & the Ghostlight, the Epilogue of the movie in full screen without the credits running, and a short documentary about the making of Cars. Four unfinished deleted scenes that should have been finished and added to the final product. I’m going to assume due to time constraints is the reason they got cut, not because of the lack of story. This is definitely a must-have for your DVD collection. Ages young and old will enjoy the movie over and over again. -jason-
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