"Cars"

I have a deep and abiding nostalgia for what I call the "Eisenhower Epoch", defined roughly as the period of time between VJ-Day in 1945 to 1968, when the Tet Offensive finally put a wooden stake in the heart of Ike's ghost (if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor). If pressed, I will sometimes extend the Eisenhower Epoch till 1973 and the end of the Apollo Program, but only if pressed, and even then only if you use a riding crop.

That era seemed simpler, saner, happier and more sensible than anything that has come afterward, at least to me. Cars looked better, clothes looked better, people didn't seem as cynical and self-absorbed, and the world just seemed to make more sense.

Those who would harsh my buzz are quick to point the Dark Side of the Eisenhower Epoch. Segregation that was tantatmount in many cases to apartheid, discrimination, unsafe cars, unsafe products, poisons in the air and water, a Cold War that featured nuclear bombers in a state of permanent alert, fighting in sub-Saharan Africa and Indochina (as it was called back then), US and Soviet tankers squaring off at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, poverty, hunger...

The Eisenhower Epoch is guilty on every charge.

But here's my counter-argument: we still have discrimination and segregation, we still have arms races, we still have poverty and hunger, we still have unsafe products and unsafe cars, we still have wars, and we still have nuclear bombers. And we have other joys as well that we didn't have back then, like climate change, gross social inequality, religion-based terrorism, exotic chemicals and hormones in our food, drug-resistant bacteria, dishonest news organizations, politicians so corrupt they don't even try to appear to be on the up-and-up, expensive gasoline, cynical TV, an exhausted electorate, the tedious and tiresome "culture wars", violent video games and music, meth, crack, Ecstacy, Britney Spears...

And you still think that the Eisenhower Epoch was somehow worse than the present day?

Which brings me in my meandering way to the movie Cars. I am usually a bit wary of such animated movies because I know they're purposely designed to smear me with schmaltz and saccharine until I crack, and I always do crack. Just because they're positively gooey with saccharine doesn't mean I don't like them. It just means I'm wary of all the saccharine and I know my sentiments are going to be cruelly toyed with.

And Cars was no different. It's saccharine and it uses plot devices that transcend trite and hackeyed by a wide margin, and it toys with my sentiments most cruelly, but it does so extremely well. It is the best animated movie I think I've ever seen, and that includes Toy Story. It spanked the pants clean off Finding Nemo and The Lion King, both of which I thought were oversold by their hype.

Cars is, for lack of a better word, delightful. The tractor-tipping was genius, Luigi and Guido never failed to make me laugh, and I was impressed that they got such luminaries as Michael Schumacher, Mario Andretti and Richard Petty to make cameos (I could complain that they didn't get Don Garlits, John Force or even Shirley Muldowney to do cameos, but I guess I can't have everything). Just splendid. But what really pushed this movie over the top for me was its unabashed nostalgia for the Eisenhower Epoch, a time of chrome and neon signs and meandering highways that passed through towns instead of going around them.

I grew up in northern Arizona just as Interstate 40 was wiping out Route 66 and the towns, gas stations and trading posts along it. I saw places like Two Guns go downhill, close, and ultimately decay into nothing, and Cars exploited my nostalgia for that epoch with brutal and delightful skill.

And "Tow Mater?" Someone deserves an Oscar just for that.