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.
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planktonrules6 December 2010
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mike4812817 November 2013Good 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!
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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 -
CubsandCulture4 January 2021This is a collection of cute cartoons that all have the same basic set-up of Mater seemingly lying about a misadventure he had in the past only for it to turn out to be true. Each is a parody of a film genre, or plot. All of them are worth the couple minutes of run time because there's a few chuckles in each. The collection on the whole is pretty rote and basic (even for kid's media) but I liked them well enough. Mater Private Eye was the best one.
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When I was a little kid, I would find these cars shorts and they looked interesting so I would watch them and I liked them, Tokyo mater might be my favorite of the ten, or maybe it's heavy metal mater, either way, this is good and I would show these to your kids to distract them while you do other things and who knows, parents might actually enjoy them like I did.
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PersonalTrainerRussHowe28 March 2011My 4 year old loved this DVD. Perhaps even more than the Cars movie itself. It's far more fast-paced and slapstick than the full movie, that's for sure, and the main character switches from Lightning McQueen (not played by Owen Wilson here) to his Cars sidekick Mater.
The lovable truck tells all kind of far fetched stories which had my son laughing along all the way, each one adding the twist when McQueen said he didn't believe the story he would get dragged into the fantasy by Mater who would play mind-games with McQueen and make him think he was there when it happened. That could have got repetitive, but my son loved it every time, especially when he knew it was coming towards the end of these shorts.
Great DVD, and gives good hope that the upcoming Cars II will be a lot more fun than the first one. Not that it was a bad film, but at times it was incredibly slow for a children's movie. This is a wonderful purchase. -
Horst_In_Translation15 February 2016"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.
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I liked very much this, personally I think that all the shorts included in "Mater's Tall Tales" were much better than the disappointing "Cars" sequels, being way more enjoyable and entertaining.
Even if each one of this shorts tends to follows a very similar pattern, the result is still pretty satisfying and well done, having an excellent animation, many new humorous situations that work incredibly well.
Also, unlike in "Cars 2", here Lightning McQueen has an important role in each one of the stories told by Matter, instead of being just a secondary character.
Without being the best work done by Pixar, it still something pretty good. -
LinusCarlbaum31 January 2022Mator aka barg-arn in Swedish lol is the best animated character of all time and when he broke out of shawshank prison was epic I also like the. I also like mater and mator and McQueen is also there and he is red.
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thomsedavi5 July 2011These short films are essentially a bridge between the first 'Cars' film and the second. In fact you could say that each short film is a concise analogy of the relationship between the two Cars films - they start out in slow-paced Radiator Springs and then branch out into far-fetched adventures. I would highly recommend watching these before watching Cars 2, they make the shift in tone much less jarring. Also the idea that Mater is always telling 'tall tales' becomes relevant in the second film.
I would not say that these are better than the two feature-length films, but they do suit their function more appropriately. The first film had good characterization, but for a children's cartoon there was not much action. The second film had a lot of action, but with less interest in the characters.
These are only intended as fun little sketches, and as such they work superbly. I had more laughs per minute than the feature films, with the highlight being a hilarious reference to 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?' -
savinainenpihla12 June 2021As a kid I didn't even notice that the episodes followed a similar formula, instead I laughed at Mater and the shenanigans he got into and how McQueen was there suddenly. I loved this as a kid but now that I'm older, it doesn't click the same way anymore. Set your expectations a bit lower when seeing this one.
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michaelmetcalf-4263112 July 2020As a person who has "respected" the cars franchise, it's not that bad.
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arielsiere12 June 2022This the first animated series from the 2006 Disney and Pixar movie called Cars and even a show that came out in 2008 i remember watching it on Disney+ and it was awesome this feels like the evolution of Cars since 2006 til i don't know and they will start they're own show in 2022 called Cars On The Road.