Cars On the Road – Series Review

Cars On the Road – Series review
9 Episodes, Rated TV-G
Directed by Steve Purcell, Bobby Podesta, and Brian Fee

**NOTE: You can listen to Mark and Ryan discuss Cars on the Road (along with Pinocchio) after you read Mark’s review below, if you’d like.**

Synopsis:

The Disney+ Original series follows Lightning McQueen and his best friend Mater as they head east from Radiator Springs on a cross-country road trip to meet up with Mater’s sister. Along the way, every stop is its own adventure, with outrageous roadside attractions and colorful new characters.

Not long ago, Disney+ dropped another limited series of animated shorts featuring a beloved character: I Am Groot. As you can read in my review of that series, I was more than a little underwhelmed.

But the cars films (well, the first film, anyway) was pretty decent and had a certain something which made them appealing to both kids and their parents without feeling too childish. The highlight of that film, of course, was the relationship between the worldly Lightning McQueen and the aw-shucks likability of Mater.

So, if you tell me that I can have nine easily digestible shorts (all of them <10 minutes) of these two buddies on a road trip, I’m initially skeptical after the Groot incident, but also hopeful.

I needn’t have worried. Owen Wilson and Larry the Cable Guy fall back into wonderful comedic sync effortlessly, and the quick-hitting nature of the adventures leaves no time to become bored or overthink anything. Instead, you can just sit back, relax, and laugh as these two jump from a Haunted Mansion-type adventure, to a Bigfoot-inspired episode, until we finally meet Mater’s family (which is a bit of a shock, to be sure).

Disney obliges with countless bits of IP ephemera both in the background and front-and-center for us to find, but it didn’t fell overwhelming, which was a nice change of pace in this time of endless exploitation and oversaturation.

Cars On the Road is a fun adventure the entire family can enjoy in a little over an hour, and rewatch without worry for the parents that they might lose their minds.

Check it out.

Cars On the Road will drop exclusively on Disney+ on September 8 and features the voices of Owen Wilson and Larry the Cable Guy.

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