After three summers in a row of Pixar movies that moved more than half of the audience to tears, the new trailer for Cars 2 seems to more or less guarantee that we'll be able to leave the tissues at home this time. The plot setup seems even more convoluted in this trailer (something to do with international espionage and...racing), but that doesn't mean you can't kick back, relax and enjoy the pretty colors, wink-nudge one-liners and wacky antics of Larry the Cable Guy.
There's nothing particularly hilarious here (unless car-bedets are the end-all of humor for you), but it's hard to begrudge such a stylish, high-energy trailer. Visually, this looks more engaging than our first looks at any other summer film, and unlike say, Speed Racer, the animators show enough restraint and attention to detail to make the candy-colored images coherent without sacrificing the breezy, pop-art energy. Also, it does look like they watched Enter the Void before designing the scenes in Tokyo. Cool!
As for the movie itself, the trailer doesn't offer much to distinguish the film's balance between kid-humor and adult in-jokes from virtually every other CGI family movie in the pipeline. But Pixar's recent track record certainly makes it safe to give the film the benefit of the doubt, at least this time. Sure, it looks more like merchandise tie-in than a movie, but the same could have been said about Toy Story in theory. And we know how that turned out.
Verdict: Sure.