Cars 3 missing ambition, heart

Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and Cruz Ramirez (Cristela Alonzo) in Cars 3. Image courtesy Disney.

Every time I write a review of a Pixar movie I hit up YouTube to watch clips from the older movies the company has made. It is a form of procrastination, but the clips do result in some inspiration from the wonders the company has produced over the years, or at the least cause me to sob uncontrollably (the opening to Up always gets me). Unfortunately, it's beginning to serve more of a trip down memory lane for when Pixar made great movies. Aside from the wonderful Inside Out, Pixar hasn't made a movie that qualifies as pretty good in about five years. Based on Cars 3, it's becoming more and more common to see exceptional movies like Inside Out be outliers, not standards.

To state it early on, Cars 3 is not a bad movie. The animation remains top notch, the racing scenes are effectively cool and engaging, and just enough of the jokes land to result in a few chuckles from kids in the audience. That, though, isn't Pixar. The company makes legendary animated movies that hit the soul like a hammer or captivate viewers with their sense of humor and great characters. At least, that's how it was for a rather long time. Then Cars came out and started to muddy Pixar's reputation. A wave of sequels to other movies started to drizzle out, some to fantastic (Toy Story 3), a couple to middling (Finding Dory) and at least one to dreadful (Cars 2) results. What's left now is the blend of the two, a third Cars movie a step below Finding Dory and mediocre enough to ask if Pixar has anything left in the tank.

What ultimately sinks Cars 3 is cynicism. This movie is designed to be a cash grab, offering little underneath the glossy patina to digest, or at least remember. Most movies are created to earn some level of profit – whether it be box office sales or merchandise – yet it remains disheartening how much of the focus for this movie is on the toys it'll sell in lieu of telling a solid, satisfactory story. It's particularly weird for this movie considering how much Lightning McQueen (voiced again by Owen Wilson) complains about becoming an empty mascot with little redeeming value beyond a brand name, protesting against the fate of his character in real life to no effect. The continued existence of the Larry the Cable Guy voiced Mater is proof enough that profit outshines creative ambition.

The push away from being a corporate shill is one of many, many messages a person could take out of Cars 3. That the writers undercut that a bit by also praising certain products featuring Lightning McQueen fits the loose moral center that guides this movie. The whole movie has this loose vibe, with plots that don’t go far enough to justify audience engagement or interest. It doesn't really matter that Lightning is intimidated by the fast new racer (Armie Hammer), or annoyed by the young trainer (Cristela Alonzo) who failed at her one shot at being a racer, or seeks life advice from the wise old truck (Chris Cooper) that taught his mentor, or discomfited by the materialistic company owner (Nathan Fillion). None of these plots are fleshed out enough to be interesting in and of themselves, and throwing them all together succeeds only at pushing the run time beyond any level of justification. The only theme that is tracked from beginning to end is McQueen's fear of getting old, which spurs him to try new training methods before giving up and reverting back to what he did before to spite the Moneyball-esque analysis that has apparently taken the love out of the sport.

What it adds up to is Trouble with the Curve mixed with Rocky IV mixed again with whatever racing movie or even feel good sports movie filled with clichés easily anticipated twists you've ever seen. Cars 3 is remarkable for its narrative laziness, and it's just boring watching Cars 3 because the expectations are planted early on and the big twists foretold with little subtlety. Even the themes are outlined blatantly by some awkwardly obvious song choices and bits of clunky expositional dialog. And, honestly, what's the point of watching a movie like this if it doesn't offer anything that hasn't already been done before? It'll keep the kids moderately entertained for nearly two hours, but that's the expectation for movies from lesser studios like Illumination, not one as great as Pixar.

Review: Three out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: G

Run time: 109 minutes

Genre: Animated

Ask Away

Target audience: Kids for sure, and along with parents trying to keep their kids occupied for nearly two hours.

Take the whole family?: Nothing too scary or intimidating about this one. Aside from a far too long run time, this is fine for all ages.

Theater or Netflix?: Matinee if you must.

How's the short film?: Really quite charming, if a little strange. Called Lou, the short about a sentient collect of lost and found items that sort of torments a child to be decent is sweet in its own way and often pretty funny. At the least it is far more interesting than the featured attraction.

Watch this as well?: Pick just about any Pixar movie unrelated to the Cars franchise and you'll get some entertainment out of it (along with lots upon lots of tears). For adults, this movie has a lot of parallels to the very strange but fun Will Ferrell racing flick Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

Free Fire hits more than it misses

Brie Larson in Free Fire. Image courtesy A24.

The central joke behind Free Fire is very clever. It’s a comedy of errors, a group of hard gangsters pushed to the boiling point only to reveal how terrible they are at actually being gangsters. And, for a while there, the joke sticks and the very dark punchline earns the guffaws writer/director Ben Wheatley and co-writer Amy Jump seek. That is until the end of the second act when the joke grows stale and the plot is dragged forward to reach the 90 minute mark for a movie with a 60 minute plot. Screams of agony are only funny for so long.

But, again, for a while there everything works pretty well thanks to the simplicity of the concept. Stick a bunch of gangsters played by reliable character actors (Cillian Murphy, Sam Riley, Sharlto Copley, Armie Hammer, Michael Smiley, Babou Ceesay and Noah Taylor) along with an A-list starlet (Brie Larson) in a room, allow tempers to boil over during an awkward gun deal, and watch as the situation goes out of control. The joke of it comes after the tension devolves into violence, and its revealed that every single person in that room is a terrible shot. In lieu of actually killing the other guys, they keep hitting calves and ankles and shoulders and feet, places that don't prevent others from shooting back but limit movements to agonizing shuffles and crawls. (The mouths rarely stop screaming, bellowing, cursing or some combination of the three.) That every character in Free Fire has what appears to be infinite ammo results in a video game reality mixed with the darkest undertones of a slapstick comedy routine.

Wheatley and Jump get a lot of mileage out of that concept by first earning the sloppy violence with effective tension building. They set up the scenario well enough that any one thing could trigger a bloodbath, whether it’s the lack of trust between the gun sellers and buyers; personality conflicts among Copley, Murphy, Hammer and Smiley; the isolated location offering little escape; or the abundance of John Denver music. Pragmatic business reasons would be a little too logical for Free Fire; Wheatley and Jump prefer to set things up with a mix of fate and machismo completely unrelated to the deal. It makes sense given the context and nature of the situation; it's far easier to compromise on business than it is on ego and blind loyalty to idiots.

Free Fire works long enough to offer a generally favorable rating. It is often hilarious watching this group of tough guys launch invectives and vomit bullets at one another, their jokes and mocks interspersed with the aforementioned screams. The cast sells the hell out of it, reveling in both the physical pain and the pain of their insults. Hammer in particular appears to have the most fun as a very dry fellow who cares little about the people around him; his loyalty is based solely on money, making him a moderately independent agent who shoots one side while insulting the other. But there's a built-in limit to the premise. At some point the bullets have to start hitting their targets and people have to die to advance the plot forward. Free Fire's humor drops as its accuracy increases, the stakes becoming a little too real. Wheatley and Jump try to make up for it by heightening the violence to make the situation more ridiculous, but it comes across as more mean spirited than the violently silly tone the film has for its first half. Free Fire stops being fun as it evolves into a traditional crime film with the unhappy endings for all involved. It's not an unfair fate for the players involved, but it isn't an overly interesting one either.

The pragmatic but unimaginative ending is one of the signs that Wheatley and Jump didn't quite have a full grasp on their project. They needed a more interesting direction for the film to take after the violence loses its humorous punch, but what they have is more over the top lunacy than interesting. Ultimately there isn't really enough going on to make 90 minutes work easily, so the movie ends more on a whimper than a bang. There remains a lot to like about Free Fire, but it still leaves viewers feeling a little unsatisfied.

Review: Three and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 90 minutes

Genre: Action

Ask Away

Target audience: Shoot 'em up fans and people down for some real dark comedy.

Take the whole family?: Nope.

Theater or Netflix?: It's fun for a night at home, but not worth a trip out to the cinema.

How Boston is this film?: Not as much as one would suspect. Despite being set in the city, there is a surprising dearth of proper Boston accents or even the city's personalities. The two supposed local boys are both played by British actors, and they lack the unfounded bravado hinted at in a proper Boston accent.

Watch this as well?: Reservoir Dogs remains the pinnacle movie about gangsters stuck in a garage waiting for fate to play out. Also something worth at least an interesting glance are the Clive Owen vehicle Shoot 'Em Up and one of the more underappreciated films from 2016, The Nice Guys.

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