Film review: Cars 2

IF YOU look on the Pixar messageboards and fansites, there's one film that does not seem to enjoy the love lavished on Toy Story, Wall-E or even Up. That film is Cars.

Boy, do they hate Cars, even before petrol hit 1.30 a gallon. Just mentioning the happy retro community of motors garaged in Radiator Springs makes animation fans blow a gasket. On the other hand kids absolutely adore its garage of anthropomorphic vehicles, led by alpha race car Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and his gaptoothed hick buddy, Mater the tow truck (Larry the Cable Guy).

Of course, someone else also loves Cars: the original movie was so close to the heart of Pixar's boss John Lasseter that he took time out from running the company to direct it. Five years on, and he's back behind the wheel, and judging by Cars 2 he also has a soft spot for 1960s spy capers, since the film opens with Finn McMissile (Michael Caine), a Bondish Aston Martin, on a mission with his inexperienced sidekick Holley Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer). The agents sneak into a series of offshore oilrigs, then use their supercarpowers, such as wings, weaponry and aquatic capability, to make a combustible escape.

Lightning and Mater get caught up in this intrigue when posh Land Rover Miles Axlerod (Eddie Izzard), who is promoting an alternative fuel called Allinol, entices Lightning to compete in a worldwide Grand Prix, and brings Mater along for the ride. (In one nice throwaway shot, the cars go through airport security, having first removed their tyres.)

When the spies clock Mater, they assume he is another ace secret agent with the flawless cover of pretending to be an idiot. It's an assumption based on incidents such as Mater spotting a pile of wasabi, mistaking it for ice cream and paying a terrible price; although you may wonder how many in the film's target audience are familiar with the valve-clearing properties of Japanese radish anyway.

Much of Cars 2 is a bit silly and unsubtle, with the cast hamming it up on all cylinders and a surprisingly large number of gags about toilets, given that everyone in this universe is a car. However Cars' petrolheads will be delighted that most of the Radiator Springs inhabitants are given the chance to feature in the sequel, with the exception of the wise old coup Doc Hudson – because who could replace Paul Newman? – and there's a lot of pleasure to be had from a car-centric world where even the Notre Dame is studded with car-goyles.

If you are a kid, this Pixar vehicle offers a beguiling trip that is tuned to be more child-friendly than Up's rather adult-centric themes of bittersweet love and loss. The message of Cars 2 is that we should accept our friends for what they are: even if, like Mater, they seem to have spent too much time sniffing petrol fumes.

• On general release from Friday. This article first appeared in Scotland on Sunday on 17 July 2011