Hot Wheels

In my previous post, I mentioned how satisfying it was to introduce the toys and movies of my youth to my own children.

Last night, I realized that the door swings both ways.

A few weeks ago, I’d decided I was tired of listening to the same old movies that our kids watch in the family van (Toy Story and Toy Story 2) and buy a couple new ones I thought they might enjoy. One of them was the animated movie Hot Wheels: World Race.

To listen to it, it’s mostly just the sounds of squeeling tires and roaring engines mixed in with a few lines of commentary. I figured it couldn’t have much of a storyline or a plot. Being based on the popular toy cars, how could it?

Scott wanted to watch it in the house last night and since I couldn’t find anything else to watch on television (we still don’t have cable or satellite, so our channel options are severely limited) I said okay and watched it with him. It was actually pretty fun to watch.

The computer animation is very well done and is easy to watch. Some of the characters are a little cheesy, but that can easily be overlooked, especially when most of the emphasis is on the cars and what they can do (there are teams of racers who are assigned cars with special abilities.)

And there’s a decent plot! Complete with an evil female mastermind who’s after the Wheel of Power (a source of limitless energy) and an army of sleek robot racers!

Scott was kind enough to fill me in on some of the details that I wasn’t aware of (such as a well crafted Wheel of Power decoy to fool the drivers) It’s always fun to hear a 3 year old’s running commentary.

What I really loved though, were all the elements of the toys put into the movie, to include the orange racetrack that the cars run on. Remember those? Piecing together all the segments of track leading from the top of the couch, down into a loop-de-loop and across the front room floor! It’s all in the movie!

Anyway, it was a sweet ride, from start to finish.