'The Little Cars in the Great Race', for a studio who've not made anything worthwhile is one of their worst. Its first sequel makes no improvement other than not being as blatant a rip-off. This second sequel is not as bad as the first, but makes the same mistakes as the second film and makes more on the way.
Say what you will about 'Cars', which is generally considered a lesser Pixar effort and it and especially its sequel have gotten a fair share of indifference or dislike. Personally thought that 'Cars' was a decent film, but was a little disappointing considering that Pixar have been responsible for some great films and even masterpieces. Whatever one's opinion on 'Cars' is, 'The Little Cars' franchise are so bad that, regardless of how problematic or disappointing the 'Cars' films are, they are guaranteed to make one appreciate 'Cars' (and its sequel) better.
For starters, the animation is incredibly lazy, looking like it was only done in a few minutes or less. Again it is filled with forced character designs, incredibly flat colours(even badly coloured crayon pictures have more refinement), recycled shots galore (getting worse with each repetition) and backgrounds that are lacking in any kind of fluidity coming across as static and simplistic instead.The music also sounds cheap and more suited to a low budget video game or a slots game, also never fitting and completely disconnected. The sound effects are just bizarre and randomly placed.
The writing once again is appalling, and doesn't even have unintentional humour value, with clunky and draggy exposition, nonsense and irrelevant chatter, lines that have even less point than the 'Psycho' remake's existence and unfunny and intelligence-insultingly stupid jokes. Luckily there isn't so much of the sexism of the first sequel that offends one just as badly as the racism in 'Little and Big Monsters'. Adults will find it too juvenile and even kids will feel like it went well overboard trying to dumb down to them. Again a big problem when so dialogue-heavy, where there is a lot of milling around and irrelevant conversations that one doesn't remember the race sequences.
Furthermore, the story is once more interminably dull, managing to completely take the thrill out of car racing. Scenes drag on and on, some serving little or no point, making the short length (though longer length than previously) feel twice or even triple times longer. 'The Little Cars: Fast and Curious' makes the further mistakes of having a tacked on and unnecessary villain, with a truly laughable plan that is foiled even quicker than when it and the character was introduced, and not seeming to know how and when to end. When it finally does it leaves the viewer uttering out loud "is that what you call an ending?", meaning it ends abruptly with no rounding off and it's like somebody stopping speaking mid-sentence.
The characters on top of being hideously animated are both bland and irritating, a few unintentionally creepy, especially obnoxious Akira and the villain. The voice acting is lifeless, like they didn't even try or even want to be there, it was almost like they were bribed or would do anything to get some quick cash.
Overall, dreadful as to be expected second sequel. 1/10 Bethany Cox
