Scarlet-22

Throughout the entire time I was watching CARS 2 in a theater crowded with VERY young children, I found myself wondering if maybe I'd just misremembered the actual MPAA rating for this movie. I was pretty sure that the theater marquee, the ticket-purchasing website, even the movie's own marketing materials all stated that this movie was rated "G", "Suitable for all audiences", by the MPAA. But the on-screen product was telling me something far different. Within the first 15 minutes of the movie, we see:

-- Cars ambushing a secret agent car (with the strong implication of a violent confrontation);

-- A warship turning guns on a fishing trawler, and;

-- A nail-biting car chase on an oceanic oil rig that wouldn't be out of place in a Bond or Bourne movie, complete with another spy car faking "death" after being shot at by a rocket launcher.

And, sadly, that's not even the WORST of what purports to be a "G"-rated family film dishes out for its unsuspecting audience of kids and their by-now-shocked parents. A MAJOR plot point of the movie involves the villain using an instability in an alternative fuel source to deliberately blow up race cars using that same fuel. Yes, you read that right: A movie that features anthropomorphic cars as its characters has several scenes of anthropomorphic cars turned into unsuspecting bombs by their fuel source. This is as inappropriate for a "G"-rated movie as it would be to have humans exploding because one of their food sources turns them into unsuspecting IEDs. This is not a movie for young children by any stretch of the imagination, and I'm not sure how a movie with this level of in-your-face explicit violence and mature content could possibly have gotten anything below PG-13.

Unfortunately, it's also not a movie likely to appeal to older children, teens, or adults. The storyline is convoluted, and even an adult friend who saw it commented on how tough it was to follow all the plot points. The message of the movie gets completely lost in all the espionage nonsense; if John Lasseter is trying to make some point about corporate machinations getting in the way of truly pursuing alternatives to fossil fuels, he needed to make it a lot clearer than turning race cars running on "Allinol" into bombs and tossing in a throwaway line near the end about how McQueen escapes the other race cars' fate. And speaking of McQueen, he and most of the Radiator Springs residents are either missing completely or simply reduced to extras needed to fill out a scene. If you're not a fan of Larry the Cable Guy or the Tow Mater character, you should just skip this movie entirely, because Mater is front-and-center as the lead in this disaster.

This isn't to say that CARS 2 is completely without watchability. The visuals are amazing at times, and the level of detail in some of the scenes serve as a reminder of why Pixar is the undisputed King of Animated Features. And the opening animated short featuring the Toy Story characters is simply brilliant. It's also, alas, the best thing about CARS 2, and it's over in less than 5 minutes.

CARS 2 is a huge disappointment as a movie, and the one good thing that could come out of it is a serious discussion about creating a rating that fills the gap between "Suitable for all Audiences" and "Parental Guidance Suggested".

GREEN LANTERN is one of those comic book/superhero movies where I want so much just to be entertained, and yet the movie has obvious problems that can't be ignored, to the point where they become a distraction. Marvel, as a whole, has figured out how to minimize this problem: Get on-screen talent so compelling to watch that the audience is less likely to start checking their watches while they check off the mandatory origin movie constructs. See Tobey Maguire in SPIDER-MAN (and Willem Dafoe as well) or Robert Downey Jr. in IRON MAN for specifics. DC seems to only get this right when Christian Bale is owning the screen as Bruce Wayne in BATMAN BEGINS. So, what's the verdict of the latest origin story to hit the screen two weeks after the really interesting X-MEN: FIRST CLASS? How does GREEN LANTERN hold up under the origin story conceit?

The good news first: This isn't nearly as bad as the mainstream critics are making it out to be. In fact, it's a LOT better than I expected. There's a lot to like here, and it starts with Ryan Reynolds, whose performance here one could probably compare/contrast w/ Robert Downey Jr. in IRON MAN: Unlike Downey's surreal smoothness from the start, you spend several minutes watching Reynolds and saying, "No...no...OK, that wasn't bad...all right, THAT'S what I was waiting to see." That moment is reached when Hal Jordan finally takes The Oath and Reynolds finally takes hold of the role in all its cheesy glory, and from there the movie revs up...

...and then stalls out again. That's the main problem with the movie: It's easily 15-20 too long, because scenes that should crackle with life sputter out between big set moments. Even the first time GL saves the day on Earth, which itself is amazing, drags so-o-o slowly in its setup. Yes, I know this is an origin story, and yes, I know pretty much ALL of these origin story movies have similar issues (SPIDER-MAN and IRON MAN aside). That does not make it right for them, and it's not right for this movie, either. Clip 30 seconds here, a minute there, speed up the action sequences, and you'd have a LOT better movie. The third act (insert showdown between unbeatable foe and reluctant hero finally coming to terms with who he's become here, folks) is truly a thing of beauty, it rocks, and it rocks HARD, but man, it's a slog to get there.

3D: Worth it ONCE. GL's constructs do look amazing in 3D, but after that the punch is lost, and it's just more budget filler. It's as if someone said "Hey, we're spending $300M on this movie, isn't it great?" No. It isn't. Spend your money where it counts, not on ridiculous 3D gimmickry.

Movie as a whole: Definitely worth it once (though, thanks to a projector failure, I got to see it twice, both for free, so I'm probably a little more charitable than any fan paying full price). So, DCers, go out and get your popcorn and sodas, take your seat in the multiplex, and remember to refrain from checking your watches during the slow grinds.

Oh, and don't forget to stick around for the mandatory post-credits sequel tease. Worth it.