Pixar Animation Studios has a knack for dreaming up wildly inventive story ideas and then seeing them through to finished film with a consistency of quality that no other studio has been able to match. Movies like WALL-E, UP and the TOY STORY series have critics drooling over themselves like Anton Ego over a plate of RATATOUILLE. Then in 2006 Pixar released the first CARS to middling reviews. It was deemed an acceptable movie, good by some standards but not great like we have come to expect from Pixar.

Then something strange happened. Children latched on to CARS. More so than any other Pixar film CARS spoke to the youth market. Toy sales went crazy. Sure parents weren’t as sucked into the story as they might perhaps like – the movie being equivalent of watching cars race in circles around a track – but they didn’t argue when their children wanted to watch it again and again. CARS was a hit with the audience Pixar was created to please. That has to be a win in anyone’s book.

Now Pixar has released CARS 2 and all the cars you know and love are back, with some new friends thrown in. Where the first movie was about Owen Wilson’s Lightning McQueen learning to slow down and enjoy the drive this movie follows his best friend Tow Mater (as voiced by Larry the Cable Guy) as he learns who he is. McQueen, of course, has his own character arc seen through but it just stands to punctuate Mater’s. The different perspective makes the movie feel new and original rather than just a retread (get it?) of the first film. Throw in a spy story with an Aston Martin named Finn McMissile (voiced by Michael Caine) and you’ve got a movie that both kids and their parents will enjoy.

The basic plot of the film follows McQueen and Mater around the world for a new race series that includes the best racecars from every walk of life including a new Italian F-Series car named Francesco Bernoulli (voiced by John Turturro). While McQueen races, Mater gets himself involved in a fast-paced spy adventure worthy of JAMES BOND, gadgets included.

With new environments and new characters the film is beautiful – even better in 2D since the 3D adds next to nothing to the film and even saps the colour brightness – and there is a sense of nostalgia to the past James Bond movies and, interestingly enough, the HERBIE series.

There is danger and more than a few explosions in CARS 2, which I initially worried might be too much for the kids who love these characters, and there is a subplot about eco-fuel and electro-magnetic pulse emitters that might go over their heads but directors John Lasseter and Brad Lewis never takes their foot off the gas pedal and that allows for the plot to keep moving forward at an incredible pace. It’s a fun movie that shows that is better than the original, showing that even Pixar can improve.