His booming entrance into the spectacular color, light and seeming three dimensions of Pixar's latest means that Lightning is emerging into his race for the coveted Piston Cup. The crowd in the stands is comprised entirely of other cars, as are the pit crew, announcers (Bob Cutlass/Bob Costas and Darrell Cartrip/Darrel Wartrip), camera operators and vendors. Blammy, slick and thrilling in its shiny surface detail, the NASCAR scene stretches before you like an anthropomorphized vista. This is the immediate future of animation, and Pixar, recently and loudly sold to Disney, means to own it.

Cars offers no other narrative, but there's plenty of noise, movement and primary hues. The race pits Lightning and a bunch of also-rans against the legendary King (Richard Petty) and the brash young Chick Hicks (Michael Keaton). A dead heat finale sends the three named cars off to a showdown in California, where the prizes include lifelong fame, sponsorship contracts and assorted big-eyed groupies. Lightning boards his transport truck Mack (John Ratzenberger) and aims west along Route 66.

As per the formulaic plotline—lifted most obviously from Doc Hollywood—Lightning's fortunes will be sidetracked when he falls off the truck and lands in the teeny town of Radiator Springs. Here he meets his life teachers, a raft of stereotypes dressed up as vehicles, from Sarge the reveille-playing, surplus-selling jeep (Paul Dooley) and Ramone the hyper-detailed lowrider (Cheech Marin) to Flo the neck-rolling (if she had a neck) diner waitress (Jenifer Lewis) and Filmore the hippie VW van (George Carlin), who likes to look at the single stoplight: "I'm tellin' ya, man, each blink is slower." And oh yes, Lightning's new best friend Mater the tow truck (Larry the Cable Guy) provides the requisite proud-to-be-a-redneck jokes.

Ticketed and sentenced to community service, repairing the road he's ruined by leading the sheriff (Michael Wallis) and deputies on a chase, Lightning squirms, complains and tries to escape. And then he gives in to the familiar life lesson that will comprise the bulk of the film's long-seeming 116 minutes. That's not say there's no tension involved in Cars: Consider that it's simultaneously marketing to the seemingly endlessly lucrative NASCAR juggernaut and reminding more than a few viewers of their current inability to afford the gas it takes to get to the theater. Is this a great nation or what?

While Lightning persists in worrying about making it to California in time for the big race, at this point he and the movie are mostly confined to his education, arranged by pretty blue Porsche lawyer Sally (Bonnie Hunt) and ordained by crotchety judge Doc (Paul Newman), a 1951 Hudson Hornet. By night he's grumbling and paving, but by day, Lightning is discovering the beauty of the Western landscape, all big skies and grand canyons, the sort of mythic imagery that, according to the movie's surfeit of nostalgia, families once drove across country to consume.

As much as the movie makes such imagery oddly fresh again, in the ever-strange form of animation (look how sharp that butte looks!) it is also, inevitably, archaic. Sally takes Lightning round the countryside to show him rock formations and an abandoned car hotel, where families of cars used to stay, apparently, when they were driving not to "make great time, but to have a great time." And so, impressed by her instruction (as much as her "curves"), as well as Doc's own racing history and knowledge, Lightning learns to appreciate what he initially calls "hillbilly hell."

All this slowing down makes Lightning a more contented race car. It also sets up all kinds of marketing opportunities. While director John Lasseter has credited his childhood affection for Matchbox cars for the enthusiasm he brought to the project, the film reframes youthful fancies as yet another set of consumable objects, ensuring that tie-in products will be in circulation for the summer. This on top of the usual commercial press for racing and race cars—the growing numbers of girl drivers in NASCAR and Formula One, the Andrettis, the lone black NASCAR driver Bill Lester, the bumps and crashes. Indeed, the rollout of Disney's Pixar Car toys and Goodyear's "Calling All Cars" tire sale, timed for the movie's opening weekend, seem only the beginning.

Cars

Directed by John Lasseter A Disney release Opens Friday at area theaters