Cars Toon Mater's Tall Tales (2008)
Mater the tow truck travels from country to country as he retells his infamous but unbelievable stories.
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A waste of 90 minutes of my life
This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
"Mater's Tall Tales" is a collection of so far (as of 2016) 11 short film about Mater (and Lightning McQueen), so this watch will only be rewarding to fans of the "Cars" franchise. All films taken together run for slightly over 45 minutes, so the average runtime is around 4 minutes, actually between 2 and 7 minutes, with the longest being also the most famous "Tokyo Mater", in my opinion possibly the weakest entry though. Oh yeah and I really wonder if Lightning McQueen has amnesia as apparently all of Mater's tales are true and Lightning has forgotten completely about everything??? Anyway, I cannot say I was well-entertained by these short films, with 1 or 2 exceptions perhaps. Not too surprising though as I believe "Cars" is among Pixar's weakest. So I guess you should only check this out if you consider (for whatever reason) "Cars" among Pixar's finest. Not recommended.
Good for very little kids as it is based on the same titled Disney picture book. A bit repetitive. I saw it on "Starz" (Disney) and kids don't like to sit thru even short front and end titles, which every segment has. Maybe they "blended" it all together on the video? (Probably not.) Tow-Mater spins a series of improbable tall tales including him as a doctor, rock star, airplane pilot,etc. He has a "close encounter" with a friendly flying saucer. All as "Tow Mater" the scruffy tow truck with a Southern "drawl" and buck teeth. Typical "Pixar" computer animation, even though it's not made by the original California studio. Best viewed in chapters, as running it all at once overwhelmed (and bored) a little 4-year-old. (It would be like running a "Looney Tunes" marathon, even though it's a mere 38 minutes long.) I think I like it better than the kid does!
I liked very much this, personally I think that all the shorts included in "Mater's Tall Tales" were much better than the disappointing "Cars" sequels, being way more enjoyable and entertaining.Even if each one of this shorts tends to follows a very similar pattern, the result is still pretty satisfying and well done, having an excellent animation, many new humorous situations that work incredibly well.Also, unlike in "Cars 2", here Lightning McQueen has an important role in each one of the stories told by Matter, instead of being just a secondary character.Without being the best work done by Pixar, it still something pretty good.
These short films are essentially a bridge between the first 'Cars' film and the second. In fact you could say that each short film is a concise analogy of the relationship between the two Cars films - they start out in slow-paced Radiator Springs and then branch out into far-fetched adventures. I would highly recommend watching these before watching Cars 2, they make the shift in tone much less jarring. Also the idea that Mater is always telling 'tall tales' becomes relevant in the second film.I would not say that these are better than the two feature-length films, but they do suit their function more appropriately. The first film had good characterization, but for a children's cartoon there was not much action. The second film had a lot of action, but with less interest in the characters.These are only intended as fun little sketches, and as such they work superbly. I had more laughs per minute than the feature films, with the highlight being a hilarious reference to 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'