Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Prof. Popinjay

I don’t know where to start with this one. Ultimately I liked it but it perplexes me. It’s kind of strange critiquing a movie where cars are the characters when I am not myself a mechanic. Do I criticize their acting performance or their mechanical performance? I never see any humans in these films. Are the characters sentient robots or are they car shaped organic aliens? I’m leaning toward an alternate universe where everyone is a car or plane or boat but how a world of sentient cars with fully emoting facial expressions came into being without opposable thumbs completely eludes me. Who builds these things? In Cars 2, Mater seems to have a profound knowledge of automobile parts and their inner workings. Shouldn’t that make him like a doctor or something in this world? Instead he is a doofus tow truck. Does he have car insurance or life insurance!?!
——The first movie left me with a lot of unanswered questions. Cars 2? More so. Now we have spy cars, European villain cars, we have cars switching their fuel, and don’t even get me started on cars taking sentient airplanes to other car countries! What if we traveled that way? Need to get to Japan? Just crawl inside that sumo wrestler over there and you’ll be there in no time. Are humans inanimate objects in this world? Is there a novel animated kid’s film in this world where humans can talk and move around without being driven around by a sentient car? I don’t have the answers to these questions and it keeps me up at night. My wife is like “Please! Professor! Come to bed! I love you! It’s only a movie!” But I have to figure this out! Is there a Car God!?! I’m freaking out!