Cars Toon Mater's Tall Tales (2008)

"Mater's Tall Tales" is a collection of so far (as of 2016) 11 short film about Mater (and Lightning McQueen), so this watch will only be rewarding to fans of the "Cars" franchise. All films taken together run for slightly over 45 minutes, so the average runtime is around 4 minutes, actually between 2 and 7 minutes, with the longest being also the most famous "Tokyo Mater", in my opinion possibly the weakest entry though. Oh yeah and I really wonder if Lightning McQueen has amnesia as apparently all of Mater's tales are true and Lightning has forgotten completely about everything??? Anyway, I cannot say I was well-entertained by these short films, with 1 or 2 exceptions perhaps. Not too surprising though as I believe "Cars" is among Pixar's weakest. So I guess you should only check this out if you consider (for whatever reason) "Cars" among Pixar's finest. Not recommended.

Good for very little kids as it is based on the same titled Disney picture book. A bit repetitive. I saw it on "Starz" (Disney) and kids don't like to sit thru even short front and end titles, which every segment has. Maybe they "blended" it all together on the video? (Probably not.) Tow-Mater spins a series of improbable tall tales including him as a doctor, rock star, airplane pilot,etc. He has a "close encounter" with a friendly flying saucer. All as "Tow Mater" the scruffy tow truck with a Southern "drawl" and buck teeth. Typical "Pixar" computer animation, even though it's not made by the original California studio. Best viewed in chapters, as running it all at once overwhelmed (and bored) a little 4-year-old. (It would be like running a "Looney Tunes" marathon, even though it's a mere 38 minutes long.) I think I like it better than the kid does!

Pixar is known for creating really good stories and putting them in animation. I noticed that in many polls on the Internet, Cars is one of the lowest voted options out of all of the movies. So it's no surprise that most won't find this series of shorts to be funny or at least Pixar worthy.However, I must admit that they did a good job since they are shorts, cartoon shows, which kids will be watching. It doesn't need a fancy back story or anything. So the Pixar worthy-ness isn't essential.I rate this 8/10 because of the humor with the shorts. The shorts are all genre's, so a rock band, going to the moon, being a hero, bull fighting, spy movies, even monster truck driving and wrestling! I laughed a lot during the UFO episode. Also, in the bonus features, one of the ideas was a stunt double, and the pun at the end with Mater saying why he doesn't do it anymore with "they do it in CGI these days" was classic! 8/10

As long as you set your expectations a bit lower, you'll enjoy these very short CGI films. I say set your standards lower because the cartoons are very, very short...and they follow the same formula in each and every one. Each consists of Mater (one of the main characters in the full-length film "Cars") telling what sound like wild fibs. And, each time his friend McQueen says he doesn't believe the story...only to then get confirmation that the story WAS true and that McQueen himself was a witness--though he somehow forgot. While the cartoons are quite trivial, they are gorgeous--with some of the nicest CGI I have seen. As a result, they hold up well on the new DVD "Mater's Tall Tales"--a compilation of all of these short films. Each short is only about 4-5 minutes in length and kids will love 'em. Adults will enjoy them for a while--until they notice that each short is pretty much the same pattern being repeated again and again.