Dear John Lasseter, why? You are the controller of Pixar and Disney animations, and your digital skills are legendary. The success of hits such as Toy Story is the stuff of folklore. You broke the mould. We love your loony sharks and fluffy monsters, but Cars is a childish Utopia too far. This immaculately painted vision of an America inhabited entirely by speaking cars is the most depressing and utterly nerdy blockbuster I’ve seen in a while. The art is terrific. But your film is a preposterous splurge of nostalgia for the open road, and your ideas about travel are pure fantasy for millions who’ve wasted entire years crawling between Junctions 10 and 14 on the M25.

How charming to see cars flirt, mate in skyscrapers, go to work at 7am, and spend their downtime watching movies. The environmental message hardly bears thinking about. Fuel is cheap and easy, and you are what you drive. The hero is a red sports car called Lightning McQueen — apparently no relation to Steve — and he is “voiced” by Owen Wilson. His sole mission in life is to win the annual Piston Cup and milk the dizzy sponsorship perks. His nemesis is a ruthless green machine called Chick Hicks (Michael Keaton). The race groupies are redneck recreational vans who swig gallons of oil and listen to endless loops of Randy Newman’s ghastly soft rock.

The “human” details make me feel queasy. Cars throw ticker tape and do Mexican waves in a giant stadium. Every front windscreen sports a pair of wobbly eyeballs. Every bumper has a pair of lips. The paparazzi and TV commentators bounce around on all four wheels. And the advertising slogans and billboards are shrill clones of familiar brands.

The plot is as novel as a second-hand spark plug. McQueen’s quest for glory takes a wrong turn on the way to the final. Instead of whizzing his way down the Interstate to glory in California, he pitches up in a hillbilly ghost town called Radiator Springs on Route 66. The smug and shiny star has to eat an awful lot of tarmac before the vintage locals will let him go. He is taught that there are more important things in life than winning races by a buck-toothed tow truck called Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) who effortlessly doubles as the village idiot. A shapely Porsche (Bonnie Hunt) is the nagging romantic conscience. And Paul Newman is Doc Hudson, a grumpy has-been with secrets under the bonnet of his 1950s Hudson Hornet.

These chippy cars take us to places we’ve visited more times than anyone has a right to remember. Lasseter’s film is flooded with bizarre Republican sentiments. There’s a perverse irony about smooching sports cars that zoom around iconic National Park scenery with 158 gallons of petrol in the tank. There are some clever jokes about tractors as thick as cows. And a Hopper-esque romance about dead-end towns and postwar values that Americans are meant to forget at their peril.

Frankly, it’s the most arrogant piece of kitsch ever made. Who really cares if 17 hours of hard labour went into every single frame? Yes, the signposts and rear-mirror reflections are wonderful, but you can’t steer technology into the future without a decent script. Cars has enviable artistic magic, but the cultural torque of a plastic McBurger bauble. It will slip behind the back seat of an ancient Volvo near Staines next Tuesday and be lost for ever.

JAMES CHRISTOPHER

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