Cars 3

(G) ★★

Director: Brian Fee.

Cast: (voices of) Owen Wilson, Cristela Alonzo, Chris Cooper, Armie Hammer, Bonnie Hunt, Larry the Cable Guy, Nathan Fillion, Kerry Washington, Lea DeLaria.

On they drove, forever turning left.

PLEASE Pixar - let this be the last Cars film.

Prior to the release of Cars 3, the only genuine lemon in the Pixar garage was Cars 2, an ill-judged spy spoof that gave way too much screen time to the most annoying character in the Pixar family, Larry the Cable Guy's hillbilly tow truck Mater.

(In case you need further proof, here's my definitive ranking of the Pixar films from best to worst.)

Cars 2 now has some company in that car-hole of disappointment. Cars 3 is as bad as Cars 2, but in whole new ways.

Returning its focus to the racetrack, Cars 3 centres on cocksure racing champion Lightning McQueen (Wilson), whose winning ways become a thing of the past thanks to the arrival of the next generation of automobiles, as personified by Jackson Storm (Hammer).

Despite everyone telling him he should call it a day, Lightning is convinced he still has what it takes to be a winner and sets about recapturing his past glories, with a little from personal trainer Cruz (Alonzo) and old-timer Smokey (Cooper).

Cars 3's biggest crime is it's boring. It feels overly long and uninteresting for huge stretches, particularly its opening 10 or 15 minutes. An horrific crash sequence is done well and livens things up momentarily before the film returns to being boring again.

With the second act largely dedicated to a protracted series of training montages - first the new way of race training, then the old-school way - it's not until the final act that the film goes up a gear. There is a nice reversal on expectation that helps make things interesting, even if it almost makes everything that preceded it redundant. But by then it's too little, too late, and your care factor will have already driven off into the sunset.

The strangest thing about Cars 3 is that its main theme is a bafflingly bad choice for a kids film. The whole story is about knowing when to retire, admitting that you're past it, accepting the limitations of age with good grace, and moving on to the next phase of your life with dignity. Its doubtful that theme would appeal to a single kid in their target demographic. Even the parents might struggle to empathise with that. For some weird reason, the Pixar brain trust has come up with a plot that specifically appeals to the grandparents who might be taking their grandchildren to the movies.

It's not that Pixar haven't delved into challenging themes before, but never with such exclusivity. It's perplexing how they could have got it so wrong. There is a subplot centring on Cruz, which is far more interesting and is more likely to connect with youngsters, but it only comes to the fore toward the film's end. Up until then, it feels like a movie a bunch of old men made to please themselves, not their audience.

As with Cars 2, Cars 3 is not funny, charming or quirky enough to make it worth its run time or to overcome its story defects. Only its ending and a demolition derby sequence bring the film to life.

Given the insane amounts of money Pixar made from merchandising on the other Cars films, its unlikely this will be the last we see of Lightning McQueen. But from a critical standpoint, it's definitely time to take this franchise to the wreckers.