Zach Menes

This is truthfully a highly underrated movie. One thing to understand about the Cars series is that despite its title, each film tells a different story and has a different focus. The first film follows hotshot race-car, Lightning McQueen, as he finds himself by getting lost in the cozy town of Radiator Springs. It's a story about family, friendship, and letting go of pride. Cars 2 tells a different story. It's focus is NOT to simply tell another "deep" story, its focus is to create a NEW story, and try a different formula. The main character THIS time around is Mater, the tow truck. Since Mater is someone who already deeply understands the values of family, and has little pride, there is a DIFFERENT lesson to learn. Cars "1" was about a single person (or car) learning to look beyond himself and see the world he's missing around him. Cars 2 is about a world looking beyond themSELVES to see the single persons (or cars) who are lonely and unique, each with their own skills. Rather than tell this message through another racing film, centered around driving and other car metaphors, the creators over at Pixar decided to try a new path, and made it a spy thriller, thus doubling up on the purposes of the film; number one being a "spy movie" and number two being an "acceptance movie". There are quite a few "acceptance movies" out there, hence why the spy theme was created to bring a larger audience and keep that audience's attention. Also, with it being a spy film, they were able to create the lemon subplot, which gave us a large example of the WRONG way to gain attention- through power and fear mongering, thus forming a solid contrast hidden in the layers of thrill and action. BUT, despite ALL the hidden "deepness", the spy portion of the film has very little lacking. The "hidden villain" element adds another layer to the action, as does the fact that everyone keeps assuming Mater is a spy. While the amount of death and violence in the show seems to be a little much for a kids' film, watching a movie like this in comparison to Shrek, or another adult film pretending to be "for kids" is a better choice. As a sort of trade-off, the ending does get quite cheesy to make up for the darker tones that the beginning presented us with, therefore rounding off the movie in a solid enough fashion for a kids film. In the end, it's not PERFECT, but in my mind, it still is a good film, and deserves to be the sequel to "Cars". While I enjoyed Cars 3, it didn't quite give enough (or any) nods to Cars 2. Cars 2 is truly underrated, and is a solid 95% or 99%.

This movie is actual hot garbage. I have never seen a worse Pixar movie in my life. I was very disappointed because I come into Pixar movies with high expectations. The soundtrack was weak, and the creativity was lacking, especially for a Pixar movie.