Cars

Yesterday, Patty, Maegan, and I went to the world premier of Pixar’s newest animated film, Cars. We got the tickets from my employer. Nearly 40,000 people attended the world premier held at Lowe’s Motor Speedway – the largest movie premier in history – but we also got exclusive access to see the stars walk the red-carpet.

My summary for the event is as follows:

• Event: Absolutely horrible.
• Movie: Excellent.

I’m very grateful that we got tickets from my employer but the event was a planning disaster. Our VIP passes stated very clearly how we absolutely had to be there before 5:00pm. (Keep this in mind when you find out what time the movie began.) While on a slow line to get through security some bad storms moved in, which of couse is not the event planners’ fault. It began to downpour heavily with thunder and lightning all around, and the winds really kicked up big time. They decided to move everybody who had already passed through security to safety inside Lowe’s Motor Speedway but they kept the hundred or so people who were still in line (including us) outside in the torrential rain, lightning, and winds. To put this weather in perspective, we found out later that there were hail storms nearby and reports of a tornado. Yet the event planners still kept us, children included, outside to fend for ourselves. Total lack of planning. We were one of the lucky few who brought rain gear but we still ended up getting soaked to the bone.

After a full 45 minutes of hoping we weren’t struck by lightning, they finally led us inside the speedway for shelter, but kept us corralled in a small area for an additional 45 minutes. By this time it’s about 7:00pm and Maegan is hungry but they wouldn’t allow us to go to the food stand that was open less than 50 feet away. When the storm finally passed we were allowed to go back to the red carpet area but then it began raining again. Others returned to the shelter but at that point we decided it was better to just sit there in the rain. We did eventually get to see Paul Newman, Richard Petty, George Carlin, John Ratzenberger, and other stars but the red carpet ordeal wasn’t really worth all that trouble.

We left the red carpet area and found our seats. They had four giant screens set up around the infield on turn two. They entertained the crowd with a short dozen-lap NASCAR race which was cool, but in Hollywood fashion everybody and their brother had to get their time to perform in the spotlight. Towards the end the crowd was chanting “start the movie!”. Despite the fact that this was a kids-oriented movie with several thousand children in attendance, the movie didn’t begin until after 10:00pm.

So the event was a disaster, but the movie (when if finally began) was very good. Patty and Maegan loved it and Patty can’t wait to buy it on DVD. For the most part I thought it was just as good as any previous Pixar film but I just found the heavy use of animated cameos to be cheesy. I had no problem with a character voiced by Richard Petty to be named “The King” but characters like Bob Cutlas (a sports announcer voiced by sports announcer Bob Costas) and Jay Limo (voiced by Jay Leno) made some moments feel like a bad 1970’s Saturday morning cartoon. I felt like somebody was supposed to nudge me with their elbow and chuckle, “Ya get it?”. They also had lots of straight cameos of stars playing themselves in car-form, like Mario Andretti and Michael Schumacher. Perhaps I’m alone in this opinon but I just think that when you want people to immerse themselves into a fictional world like that, making connections to celebrities in the real world destroys the illusion. But other than the cheese-factor of those celebrity cameos, the rest of the movie was excellent. And despite the earlier troubles, it was still kind of cool to attend the world premier, outdoors, with 40,000 other people.