Hi, I'm Dana Stevens, and this is a Slate spoiler special podcast on Cars 2, the new Pixar movie sequel to the first cars from 2006.

With me calling in from the DC Slate studio is Mr. Dan Cois. Hey, Dan.

Hi, Dana.

Dan, critic for Washington Post, Village Voice, Vulture, anyplace else you want to shout out?

Whoever will pay me.

Freelance critic at large.

You specifically asked to come in and talk about this movie because you weren't going to write about it and you wanted somewhere as you put it to unload your despair.

So we can start off from that point.

You're in despair about cars too.

It's just very frustrating to me that after 25 years of doing nothing but making great movies,

Pixar has made an adequate movie that I can't get that excited about.

Yeah. What about the first cars? I mean, that's often cited as one of the lesser of the great Pixar movies.

It's the least of the great Pixar movies, I thought, until now.

But it still was a movie that did reward repeat viewing of the sort that parents always have

to do with kids' movies and of the sort that other Pixar movies have rewarded even for

parents without their children.

You know, it's a movie that is a little bit simple and a little bit silly, but has a real

heart behind it and has a lot of characters that really stick beyond sort of the central

pair of Lightning McQueen and Tomator.

But Cars, too, I just really felt like it's the first Pixar movie where it just seemed like

anyone could have made it.

Any studio could have got these voices, could have written this story, could have jammed a spy thriller into a movie

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