CarGo

Ed Asner has betrayed Pixar by being in a rip off Pixar movie.

When I first saw the trailer on Youtube I was certain that it was merely created as a joke by someone with 3d animation software, good voice talent and way too much time on their hands. Then I saw the movie. It was like a nightmare. I watched the first 1/2 hour with eyes wide and mouth agape in shock before I slipped into a drooling trance of boredom. Kids are going to end up spanking their parents if forced to watch this.

This movie makes me want to bleach my eyes. The animation is garbage, and the story makes no sense. The only thing this film has going for it is that the voice acting is decent.

The shameless comedy-musical rip-off of 'Cars' is as boring as they come, wasting some genuine talent (Hart, Osment and Asner) chasing an easy payday as it rides the coattails of the better-made original.

It's quite astonishing that a film this blatantly derivative can be released in such close proximity to the source material, especially when you consider the strength of that brand. I can see plenty of unsuspecting punters grabbing this DVD by mistake and I shudder to think the rage those kids would unload on a parent when they discover the ruse. Like when you ask for a Transformer for Christmas, but your clueless parents got you a GoBot by mistake. Except in this case, 'Cars' and 'Cargo' don't leave much margin for error. The whole 3D look, shape, attitude and colours of the automobile characters are very close to the original, albeit on a much smaller budget with inferior graphics and a plot so thin it would wipe away after one rinse.

There's even characters performing weak Peter Lorre and Marlon Brando impersonations - nothing it seems is sacrosanct when there's someone else's patronage to exploit. Nothing to praise here, it's just a lemon pumped full of cooking oil, lurching and spluttering toward an inevitable blowout that will probably make your kids cry.

This was just another shameless rip-off made to scam unsuspecting people so "The Asylum" could cash in on Cars 3. While this didn't entirely rip off Cars, any original story was still poorly handled. Being mixed with songs that have lousy, mismatched lyrics and clumsy singing didn't help.

As with Trolland, there's a remarkable voice cast here consisting of Haley Joel Osment as Danny, Melissa Joan Hart as Cabigail, and Ed Asner as Art, but their performances are watered down by their lines. The dialogue is shoddy and drawn out. Plus, the corny car jokes told throughout the movie were annoying. Few of the characters are even sympathetic; despite being the main protagonist, Danny is a street-racing delinquent who almost gets his father killed.

Part the course for "The Asylum" the CGI was horrible. The lame racing scenes had static driving animation that is as stale and unexciting as the dialogue. The car models and buildings are plain looking with little to no texture. There's copied and pasted car models and trees. The cars sometimes clip through the scenery. The characters barely emote at all with their blank, beady eyed stares and the lip sync is almost as bad as Trolland. The list goes on and on.

I'll admit this was better than "Trolland", "Homeward", and "Izzies Way Home", but that's not saying much at all. I can only hope not too many parents were tricked into buying this after mistaking it for "Cars 3".