The Little Cars in the Great Race

The Little Cars in the Great Race
This is Big Rigs if it was a movie, spawned over seven sequels, almost every possible huge variety of merchandise, and had cars instead of trucks. Should have been "The Unlikable Little Cars in the Great Disgrace".
Genre: Racing Family Directed by: Cristiano Valente Written by: Cristiano Valente Starring: Booth Daniels Penny McSeller Jimmy Hengarter Matt & Seth Rockman Holden Saunders Matt Burton Photography: Color Distributed by: Vídeo Brinquedo Release date: June 20, 2006 Runtime: 34 minutes Country: Brazil Sequel: The Little Cars: Rodopolis Adventures

The Little Cars in the Great Race (Os Carrinhos em: A Grande Corrida in Portuguese) is a mockbuster film released on June 20th, 2006, by Vídeo Brinquedo, which was made to cash-in on the popularity of Cars, which is a similar film released earlier that year.

Plot

A taxi named Tony Tunado ("Tunado" being a Brazilian slang for a modified car; Cruise in the US) has a dream of being a race car. His chance may come soon when the big race comes to town.

Why It's Not Racing So Great

1. This film of course is a rip-off/mockbuster of Cars (titled Carros in Brazil), which was released 10 days after that film in Brazil. Another similar film however, released on November 5th months later is A Car's Life: Sparky's Big Adventure, another rip-off/mockbuster film which is a lot even closer to some of Cars' similarities.
2. The lip-syncing is awful. Whenever the characters speak, their mouths move in a really weird manner, with the most noticeable example being when Kombo talks.
3. Extremely awful special effects, such as in one scene where Victor deploys an oil launcher, causing an oil spill, it is just a freeze-frame.
4. The voice acting ranges from decent at best to terrible at worst in the first English dub of the film.
5. Very dull and bad CGI animation, even for 2006 standards.
6. Repetitive, annoying, and monotonous background music.
7. Awful car puns like "You're the wheel-deal!", with "real" being "wheel" of similar pronunciations.
8. The programmers were too lazy to make CGI models for the secondary characters, so they recycled the same car model for each citizen, the pit stop team members of Victor and Cruise, and the policemen. The same case goes with the rest of the racers; they recycled the same model of Cruise for each one, they almost look like clones! And all of the pickup trucks/tow trucks look like Kombo/Lug Nut.
9. The scene when Cruise drinks the altered gasoline and passes out is very pathetic.
10. Unexplained plot hole: Why were there nails in the middle of the racetrack in the final lap and why they only affected Victor and not Tony?
    • Because of this, Victor is actually the evil guy antagonist who hates to win.
11. The "Great Race" is extremely anti-climactic. Despite never have training for a race before, Tony somehow surpasses all the racers and arrives where Victor is, and in the final lap, some nails appear in the middle of the racetrack. Victor passes over them, his tires are deflated, leaving him unable to move, Tony surpasses Victor, he wins the "Great Race", Victor gets arrested for trying to poison Cruise despite the fact that he returns in the sequels, Cris kisses Tony, and the movie ends.
12. The ending credits song is a rip-off of Back to the Future's main theme.
13. There was a scene that did rip off a scene from Cars: Tony and Kombo drive, and the latter sings, "Tony has a crush on Cris" like how Mater was singing to Lightning McQueen, "You're in love with Miss Sally".
14. Some elements were a big foreshadow of Cars 3 despite the film being released later in 2017 (See Trivia below).
15. The car models look like they were cheap plastic toys made in China you'd see at common well-known stores like CVS, Walgreens, Dollar Tree, etc.
16. False advertising: They show the number "1" on the cover, meaning this is the first film, which makes no sense for a film that hasn't spawned a sequel yet.
17. There are even parodies of real-life brands like Mobilaria, which is basically based on the real-life Mobil in the film. However, this does make a lot of sense as it is to avoid copyright issues and product placement.
18. To top it all off, it spawned completely over SEVEN SEQUELS! They are nothing more than compilation movies of a badly animated TV series.
    • It could've easily spawned only two by their same years, like Cars currently has.

Redeeming Qualities

1. Despite its sequels still being low budget, they begin improving on the voice acting in the English dub using the 4Kids cast. This is very similar to the improvements made to Spark Plug Entertainment's Car's Life sequels.
2. There are some funny moments in the film, even if they were unintended.
3. The CGI models seem to be passable, although they were recycled.

Reception

The Little Cars in the Great Race got extremely negative reviews from audiences.

Trivia

• Some elements of the film have strange parallels in Pixar's Cars 3: despite that film not being released until 11 years after this one, these parallels are: A yellow car who becomes a racer (with a similar name "Cruz", despite Cruise being the main character and is a male), the villain being painted black who also has a supercar-inspired design as well, and the big race where the champion is unable to attend. (See WINRSG #13)
• Kombo, despite him actually being a Tow Mater rip-off, his design is very similar to Fillmore from Pixar's Cars with a different appearance, Kombo is also a reference to the VW Kombi. which is actually Kombo's exact model. However, Fillmore is modeled as a "Type 2" instead).
  • However, it is possible that he is actually a mix between Fillmore and Mater.

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