Review: 'Cars on the Road' is creative overdrive with McQueen & Mater's shenanigans resulting in good fun

Cars on the Road

Seemingly, we can never get tired of watching Lightning McQueen and Mater's friendship and shenanigans, can we? After three Cars movies, one would wonder where else can the makers go with this franchise. Well, apparently to several places as they introduce us to the series, Cars on the Road. The 10 short episode series is written and directed by Steve Purcell, who was one of the minds that created the first Cars film. Having had the chance to see the entirety of the season beforehand, here is what I thought of it-

Creative Overdrive

One of the most rollicking things about Cars on the Road is that the makers attached to this project have seemingly gone unhinged and into complete creative overdrive. On one hand, in a film, you need to build and idea and centralise a screenplay for around two hours with ups and downs. Here, the overarching theme stays with a particular concept but the episodic treatment allows the makers to go bananas and they do! Every episode is about McQueen and Mater experiencing a new event and while not all of them are impactful, a few of them hit well. The introductory episode of Ivy, the spooky episode and my personal favorite, the Mad Max Fury Road inspired penultimate episode was insane fun. Talk about having multiple possibilities with anthropomorphism and these shorts are indeed the perfect example of that. 

Losing Steam

As mentioned, what becomes a repercussion of this episodic treatment is that some click and a few others don't. Even though, the runtime of these shorts is less than 10 minutes for each of them but even then it starts getting a tad uninteresting with every short passing by. You feel that this road trip of two best friends, McQueen and Mater is now entering the outlandish phase just trying too hard. This leads to the world losing steam towards the end and it is only helpful that the penultimate episode and finale is a lot of fun. The sibling bickering and love between Mater and his sister, Mato is amazing. So it indeed works in more places than one would imagine but still falters overall. 

The Voice Cast Giving Their Best

As usual, even after three films, the voice cast continues to give their absolute best to this franchise. Owen Wilson is ever reliable and fantastic as Lightning McQueen and Larry The Cable Guy as Mater continues to be adorable, goofy and innocent as always. Dana Powell as Mato is also a great addition. The cameos of a few returning characters also add spark to the season making it an entertaining one.

The Verdict

In the end, Cars on the Road is harmless and good-old fun time with a franchise that might have lost steam in the movie format but has endless creative possibilities with this short episodes format just the way it ends Season 1. It is also a lot more enjoyable for the fans, who have seen the three Cars films and might be a stretch for the non-Cars fans.

Rating - *** (3/5)