Movies on the Wall

Published 7:00 am Wednesday, July 15, 2009

A baby-boomer retro road trip, Cars (2006) errs too much toward the youth of its creators, rather than that of its intended audience. It’s a crinkled yellow roadmap followed by Toy Story’s John Lasseter, who imagines the Route 66 of his youth populated, like the rest of this petroleum planet, entirely by automobiles. His hero is a brash red racecar (voiced by Owen Wilson), who gets stranded in a desert hamlet. There we’ve got a gruff old-timer (Paul Newman), a sexy Porsche (Bonnie Hunt), and various four-wheeled stereotypes (Cheech Marin, George Carlin, etc.). It’s all a little uncanny; there’s something bizarre about love-struck hotrods stopping to smell the roses. Outdoor movie screened at dusk. (G) BRIAN MILLER

Sat., Aug. 15; Sat., Aug. 22, 2009