Starring: (voices of) Owen Wilson, Christela Alonzo, Chris Cooper, Nathan Fillion, Larry the Cable Guy, Armie Hammer, Bonnie Hunt, Tony Shalhoub
Director: Brian Fee
Release date: 14th July 2017
An indeterminate amount of time has passed since the last movie, and we now find Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) still doing what he does best, racing and winning. One day a rookie named Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer) appears and beats Lightning, without breaking a sweat. Lightning doesn’t know what’s happening.. Newer, younger racers are appearing and taking over the races. It’s not long until, during a race, Lightning crashes spectacularly and ends up out of action for a while. He ends up having to go to the home of his sponsors, Rusteze for a new training regime. He meets the CEO, Sterling (Nathan Fillion) and he allocates Lightning to a Trainer, called Cruz Rodriguez (Christela Alonzo). She is passionate about what she does, but Lightning’s having none of it. He gets a brand new, sleek paintjob and feels like a new car. He is stubborn and believes the old ways are the best. He believes he just does what he does and no training on treadmills will make him any better. He doesn’t know it yet, but he will have to look at things from a totally new perspective.
This is the third instalment in the Worldwide phenomenon that is Disney Pixar’s ‘Cars’ series, with the first movie unbelievably being released back in 2006. It certainly feels like ‘Cars’ has been around for much much longer than 11 years. When we were first introduced to Lightning McQueen he was a young rookie race car, trying to prove himself. Since then he has grown up quite a lot and made many good and close friends, including his best friend, Mater, a battered up and rusty 1951 tow truck. The pair have been through many scrapes with eachother over the 3 movies, but in this new one he is not such a pivotal character. ‘Cars 3’ focuses a lot more on Lightning’s relationship with Cruz Rodriguez, his new trainer and also about him facing up to the fact that he’s not the young rookie he once was.
You can’t really go wrong with the ‘Cars’ movies. Most kids seem to love the whole Lightning McQueen thing and the amount of merchandising for the franchise speaks volumes, as to the popularity of it all. Kids of all ages will love this movie and it’ll be a great one to go to for a family trip out. Not so much a film for the grown-ups, there’s none of the ‘in joke’ thing going on really with this movie, which was a tiny bit of a disappointment but that being said, it does what it says on the tin. A great kid’s movie to take the little ones along to during the Summer holidays.
Overall: 7.5/10
