Get Your Motor Running

By RICHARD CORLISS

John Lasseter grew up in Southern California, where driving is people's passion and second career, and a car their church and fortress. So if you ask Lasseter about car love, you get an impromptu prose poem. "Car love," he says, "is the sound of a throaty V-8 rumbling and revving, the acceleration throwing you back in the seat--especially when you get on a beautiful, winding road and the light's dappling through the trees. For me, it's a combination of enjoying the beauty of cars, classic or cool modern ones, and also the actual driving: getting out on the open road, whether it's a family road trip or driving by myself on a nice windy road and enjoying the ride."

Lasseter, 49, is also the Dale Earnhardt of computer animators, the first name in a mammothly successful form of popular art he pretty much created, beginning with his short Luxo Jr. in 1986. From the start, he's been the soul of Pixar Animation: he directed its first three hits (Toy Story, A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2) and executive-produced its next three (Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo and The Incredibles). Early this year, when Disney bought Pixar--basically paying about $7 billion for Lasseter's brain--he became boss of the grand old animation studio as well as the most revered modern one. His job: get both groups to make great movies.

They couldn't have a model that's smarter, snazzier or more moving, kinetically and emotionally, than Lasseter's Cars, which opens June 9. "I love having inanimate objects come to life," he says, ever the boy who can't stop tinkering and dreaming. All the characters are cars, but they're engagingly human. The lands they inhabit are richly detailed (thanks to years of research by Lasseter, co-director Joe Ranft and their team) and worlds apart: the NASCAR circuit, where autos and egos collide at 180 m.p.h., and a 1950s-ish town, keeping a sense of community far from the superhighway rat race.

Owen Wilson voices Lightning McQueen (as in speed and Steve), the hottest rookie on the circuit, and doesn't he know it! He's got drive, heaven knows, but no perspective. Who needs friends, or a pit crew? He's a one-man show! Ka-chow! Lightning's main rivals in the movie's opening race are "the King" (racing legend Richard Petty), who's going for one last win before he retires, and a dirty-driving mug named Chick (Michael Keaton), who's so rotten that one of his sponsor decals reads htB, for Hostile Takeover Bank.

An unexpected detour lands Lightning in Radiator Springs, a southwestern hamlet off Route 66 that lost its bustle and prosperity when the Interstate went up ages ago. The town's pulse--does it even have one?--doesn't suit Lightning, who's itching to get to L.A. for the biggest race of his young career. But he's stuck in nowheresville, obliged to repave a road he had torn up on his way through.

Up to now, Cars has been motoring at a Mach pace, as gags and characters flash by. Once in Radiator Springs, the film moseys to the tempo of a town time forgot. Even the songs slow down (yes, this is also a musical), from John Mayer's vigorous take on Route 66 to James Taylor warbling Randy Newman's gorgeously plaintive Our Town.

Not that Cars ever idles, for the townsfolk constitute a sweet if improbable rainbow coalition of vintage vehicles. They support the trio that will retool Lightning's egotism into community spirit: gruff Doc Hudson; lovely, sensible Sally; and--the movie's breakout car-actor--an endearingly yokelish tow truck named Mater.

It's Mater who teaches Lightning the truth of any Lasseter film: friendship is family. "To Lightning," he says, "Mater represents pure friendship. Like a dog: 'I'll be by your side forever.'" (Mater was the inspiration of Ranft, whose story-tweaking genius infused every Pixar movie. Tragically, he died last August, when the car he was in missed a turn on that beautiful winding road, California's Pacific Coast Highway.)

Lasseter is an old hand at humanizing machines. Cars does it in large part with the detailing of "facial" features. Most car 'toons anthropomorphize their characters by having the headlights serve as the eyes. Lasseter, following a charming Disney short, the 1952 Susie, the Little Blue Coupe, made the windshield the eyes. Cars also has fun turning hood ornaments into mustaches, grilles into mouths. More important, it evokes shifts of mood by the subtle shift of body weight, the low growl of an engine.

All this speaks to the unmatchable narrative and graphic ingenuity Pixar brings to its projects. "In computer animation," says Lasseter, "every detail has to be thought out, designed, modeled, shaded, placed and lit. The more you add, the more computer memory you need. We brought computer memories to their knees with this one."

A brief stay in Radiator Springs brings Lightning to his senses: to the recognition that the old have tricks to teach the young, that winning means more than coming in first and that speed can't top taking your time to savor the scenery--that, as Lasseter says, "the journey in life is the reward."

As the new hydra-head of animation, Lasseter may have an uphill journey: not just keeping Pixar on track (Brad Bird's Ratatouille, about a gourmet rodent in Paris, is next, probably followed by Toy Story 3), but also in steering the Mousemobile back to speed. In 1994, when The Lion King capped a series of animation hits, Disney's bright future seemed as sure a bet as Pixar's does now. Then Toy Story came out, and computer animation took over. Before buying Pixar, a desperate Disney had scuttled its traditional animation unit. Lasseter may restore that. "Of all studios that should be doing 2-D animation, it should be Disney," he says. "We haven't said anything publicly, but I can guarantee you that we're thinking about it. Because I believe in it."

Reconciling Pixar's postmodern culture with the Disney tradition seems tough. But if high-tech Lightning McQueen could find his destiny in retro Radiator Springs, why can't Lasseter find a way to turn yesterday into tomorrow at Disney? He's surely shown opposites can attract in his wonderful new film. Existing both in turbo-charged today and the gentler '50s, straddling the realms of Pixar styling and old Disney heart, this new-model Cars is an instant classic.