Before you heed my warning, let me provide a little context. I have seen the original PIXAR Cars movie dozens and dozens of times. When my sons, now 4 and 6, can’t agree on anything else for family movie night, we watch Cars. I took my then 18 month-old to see Cars in the theater as his first toddler movie-going experience; that was a bad idea for other reasons, but the movie is sweet, simple, not scary, and has a positive message of friendship.
Ummm, why are they running for their lives?
So, why not take your toddler or young preschooler to see Cars 2?
- Guns. Lots and lots of guns. Shooting. Killing. You don’t want your kiddo to see gun violence, stay away from this movie. You don’t care so much? Read on.
- Complicated plot. Way too confusing. If you replaced the animated cars with human actors, this could be a regular semi-decent spy thriller. Children do not understand the difference between Big Oil and bio-fuel nor should they have to.
- Lacking all charm and positive messaging. Actually, if you are an adult really looking for these things, you will find two different throw-away lines about standing by your friends and being yourself. But those lines are buried. Buried by guns.
I took my sons to see this movie on the first Saturday matinee showing. They said they loved it but didn’t understand lots of it. My four year-old had nightmares for two nights after.
Don’t take my word for it. As of this writing, Cars 2 has scored 33% fresh on RottenTomatoes.com, the worst score for any Pixar movie. According to Commonsensemedia.org, 74% of parent-reviewers say that violence is an issue and they recommend it for ages 8 and up.
So, if you saw Cars 2 already, do you agree with my assessment? If you haven’t, did I sway your opinion?
I am in my mid thirties, and I imagine lots of the people who commented here are. When I grew up in the eighties there were plenty of TV series like The A-team, McGuiver, Airwolf and the likes that we all watched and talked about in school the next day. Heck cartoon series back then like G.I. Joe were about warfare and military hardware, we ate it up. As for death, look at the many classic cartoon series such as Tom and Jerry or the Warner brothers cartoons. There’s an episode of Tom and Jerry where Tom blew up the whole house and killing himself in the proces, we see him sitting on a cloud with a halo and angels wings looking down while Jerry comes from the rubble unscathed. Or the one where Porgy Pig shoots Sylvester and then is haunted by nine ghosts, each for every of his nine lives.
We grew up watching this stuff, thinking not to much about it but now that we have kids of our own it suddeny does matter, for Pete’s sake, we even have removed Cookie monster from Sesame street because of him advocating gluttony.
But to get back on Cars 2, it’s petrol head’s movie that’s for sure, there were a lot of kids in the theatre when I saw it and I’m pretty sure that none of them got all the refferences. Their dads however did and I spend some time with a couple of them talking about how they made the Queen of England a Rolls Royce or how the Popemobile rode inside ANOTHER pope mobile and how Tomber (French for “Falling over”) is a Relaint Robin, a car known for stability issues and flalling over when you take a turn.
THAT’S the audience Cars 2 was made for: car enthusiasts, it was never plugged as a kids movie in the first place.
@W.J. You had me until “it was never plugged as a kids movie in the first place.” Immediately, I assume you have no children. Have you seen the commercial tie-ins for children? Chickenish nuggets shaped like the characters, flavored desserts, toys up the wazoo, miniature underwear?! Perhaps car enthusiasts get into that stuff too… or have a whole other load of tie-ins I’m not aware of, but it sure as heck was marketed as a kids’ movie.
[...] Do NOT take your little one’s to see Cars 2 [...]