John Lasseter and the Pixar team must've seen "Doc Hollywood" and wondered: what if it was the car that was sentenced to community service. It's all there--the corrupt city (D.C. and Hollywood in this case) vs. rural virtues, the rom-com, the curmudgeon mentor, the automobile carnage, even the film-within-the-film, which albeit is more amusing in "Cars" (2006), but at least this one has Buster Keaton in "The General" (1927), a far better film than either of these, mildly entertaining and rather innocent though they may be.
The most amusing aspect here methinks is that despite the characterization of Hollywood (the movie capital, along with the nation's capital of D.C.) as fake--the land of plastic surgery and plastic credit cards--the small South Carolina, "squash capital of the South," town, Grady, is actually entirely a fiction. It only exists in the movie. One may assume much the same is the case with the rural virtues and quirky behavior of the townsfolk. Moreover, the central romance is initially framed as a dream under the cover of a quilt said to show one who they're to marry. Despite the PG-13 rating, too, there's a prominent topless scene.
Michael J. Fox is a likable personality. His stardom was built on roles such as this, where he played a fish-out-of-water who clashed with a culture somehow at odds with his character, whether the conservative Republican son of hippies in "Family Ties," the 1980s teenager sent back to the 1950s in "Back to the Future" (1985), or a big-city doctor stuck in a hick town as in this one. The more-kiddie Pixar misses much of this besides, of course, the nudity, but also the foreshadowing of the rest of the narrative as the dream come true. An insubstantial film, but I enjoyed it.
The most amusing aspect here methinks is that despite the characterization of Hollywood (the movie capital, along with the nation's capital of D.C.) as fake--the land of plastic surgery and plastic credit cards--the small South Carolina, "squash capital of the South," town, Grady, is actually entirely a fiction. It only exists in the movie. One may assume much the same is the case with the rural virtues and quirky behavior of the townsfolk. Moreover, the central romance is initially framed as a dream under the cover of a quilt said to show one who they're to marry. Despite the PG-13 rating, too, there's a prominent topless scene.
Michael J. Fox is a likable personality. His stardom was built on roles such as this, where he played a fish-out-of-water who clashed with a culture somehow at odds with his character, whether the conservative Republican son of hippies in "Family Ties," the 1980s teenager sent back to the 1950s in "Back to the Future" (1985), or a big-city doctor stuck in a hick town as in this one. The more-kiddie Pixar misses much of this besides, of course, the nudity, but also the foreshadowing of the rest of the narrative as the dream come true. An insubstantial film, but I enjoyed it.