Cars Toons: Mater's Tall Tales

Starring: Larry the Cable Guy (11 episodes), Keith Ferguson (11 episodes), Jan Rabson (8 episodes), Elissa Knight (7 episodes), Danny Mann (7 episodes), Lindsey Collins (6 episodes), Lori Allan (6 episodes), Stacy Keach (1 episode), John Michael Higgins (1 episode)
Directed by: Rob Gibbs (11 episodes), John Lasseter (7 episodes), Victor Navone (4 episodes)
Rating: Not rated
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Comedy
2008-2012

Seasons Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) tells tall tales that always include Lightning McQueen (although he never remembers being there).

Review:
Tim: If I didn't have a little boy at home obsessed with Cars, I certainly never would have sat down to watch "Cars Toons: Mater's Tall Tales". I'm still not exactly sure what this is. I suppose it's a television series, but it's made up of very short episodes (or you could argue it's a bunch of short films). Regardless, there's eleven episodes that were released over a period of four years. Each one follows the exact same formula- Mater tells a tall tale about crazy, ridiculous thing that happened. Lightning responds by saying "That never happened!" and then Mater say something about "of course it did, and you were there!" and then we see Lightning added into the story. It's harmless and mildly entertaining, albeit a bit repetitive. Each episode is wildly different- there's a time travel one, airplanes, UFO, heavy metal, fire truck, etc. The episodes are fine, they aren't up to the typical Pixar standards, but there's nothing really wrong with them either. My son liked them just fine.

It was a little harder for me to enjoy them for a few reasons. First, they star Mater, who is the most annoying aspect of Cars. He's okay in small doses, but anything more and he starts to grate on my nerves. He's okay here, simply because the whole episode is built around his crazy persona. Still, I don't love the character. Secondly, I didn't like that Keith Ferguson replaced Owen Wilson as Lightning McQueen. I get why Wilson didn't want to do these short, throwaway episodes. Lightning never has all that much to do anyway here. Still, it's not the right voice and I didn't care for that. The episodes are short, so they're a bit frantic and they're obviously quite formulaic. These are designed for young kids, though, and they do appeal to that demographic.

While I can't claim to have loved "Cars Toons: Mater's Tall Tales", I'm not negative about them either. I sat down with my son and we watched all of them in an afternoon and had some nice time together. He enjoyed them. So, while I wish these were better, they still afforded me a nice experience with my son, so I'm pretty thankful for that.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: N/A



If You Enjoyed This Series, We Recommend: Cars Toons: Tales from Radiator Springs