Cars

The movie is about a Cars is about a race car named lightning McQueen a rookie racing car who calls himself a one man show and that he doesn’t need a crew team who is got wrapped up in fame. In a race to determine who wins the piston cup he gets in a 3 way tie and then has to travel to another race to determine the tie breaker. Lightning McQueen is determined to win the race to take on the new brand to boost his image. But along the way Lighting McQueen gets lost and ends up in a town and is pulled over for speeding and destroyed a town’s road and stores. After being forced to fix the roads he meets some cars that teach him valuable lessons. The overall big picture message of the movie is that Fame and money can’t bring you happiness. And that life is about being with other people and sharing experiences. In the beginning of the movie Lightning McQueen is show as an arrogant, selfish person who doesn’t care about other cars. Once he arrives at Radiator Springs his “easy living” “uncaring” lifestyle catch up to him and is forced to take responsibly for his own actions. Some of the lessons he learns in the town and are positive messages for the audience are that you can’t take the easy way out. As he is fixing the road he tries to take the easy way out by cutting corners and it ends up taking him an extra day so this teaches kids that you shouldn’t cut corners and that you should work hard.  Another positive message is that you need other people in your life and that you can’t do everything by yourself. Probably the most important message that Lightning McQueen learned and is positive for the audience is that winning isn’t everything. Lightning McQueen even end up losing the race on purpose just to help a care that crashed and he ends up getting more praise from the audience and workers than the guy who won. There are many good messages throughout the movie but there are some potential bad ones as well. The way that the movie poetries cars supports many stereotypes. The cars that were in Radiator Springs were of lower intelligence. This was show by the “hillbilly” way they talked and the fact that they were rusty old cars and even had buck teeth. This may further support stereotypes to children that people of less intelligence are ugly. Furthermore many of the car represented different ethnic cultures and had them acting in their stereotypical ways. Another bad potential message lied in the Female car. There were only two female car that had big role and one of them was a really nice looking Porsche and even Lightning McQueen tell her to “just stand there and look pretty” and calls her babe.  And the only reason he treats her like this is because he thinks that she is from his company and when he finds out she isn’t he treats her differently. this reinforce gender stereotypes of a woman only value is her looks. In the End McQueen gets this girl but is only drawn in by her looks.

               Overall I believe this movie had many positive messages that outweighed the negative ones. The movies moral is an overall positive message about how rich and fame can’t bring you happiness and that friendship is most important. Even though the movie is rated G and is targeted at younger kids, I think the producers of this film made the positive messages very clear and easy to understand