(Baltimore Sun, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Jun. 9--Pixar's beguiling comedy-drama Cars, the latest alternate universe envisioned by computer-animation pioneer John Lasseter (the Toy Story movies, A Bug's Life), contains no humans, only automobiles that have human features: eyeballs in the middle of their windshields, eyebrows at the top of them, and mouths and teeth under the grilles.

These cars overflow with heart, wit and new ideas. And the picture has a moviemaking fearlessness that conventional directors would be wise to emulate. At a time when blockbuster directors panic at the thought of slackening their pace and giving an audience time to feel something, Lasseter turns a portrait of hot-shot Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson), a racer with issues, into a salute to slowing down and savoring life.

It's about knowing when to stay in the fast lane and when to high-tail out of it. The movie begins with a splurge of color and movement at the running of the Piston Cup - a race that Lightning charges through with a go-for-broke brashness that triggers a messy, unprecedented three-way tie. But en route to an epochal race-off in Los Angeles, Lightning rips up the main drag of a dusty Southwestern burg called Radiator Springs and gets a day in court.

The town's judge, Doc Hudson (Paul Newman), also its trusty mechanic, immediately takes Lightning's measure as a car too impatient and self-absorbed to be a winner - a flashy loser who should be sent on his way. But town attorney and motel owner Sally Carrera (Bonnie Hunt), a 2002 Porsche, nudges Doc into sentencing Lightning to community service: repaving Radiator Springs' Main Street.

The Pixar team's knack for visual and verbal jokes that knock you silly, often in unexpected combinations, has never been more pleasingly punchy. It's immediately ticklish to see a fetching blue sports car like Sally cause a bright-red stock car like Lightning to pop his eyes and form his mouth into a hopeful smirk. When he asks, "How's a Porsche wind up in a place like this?" - and Sally says, "I fell in love" - Lightning sighs, "Oh ... a Corvette?" If you have any soft spot for cheerful American pop, the interchange just kills you.

The most engaging thing about Cars is: Sally answers, no, it was the town she fell in love with. Movie lovers may recall the magical way the misty beauty of the Scottish isles worked over the London go-getter played by the great Wendy Hiller in the classic I Know Where I'm Going. That's how the towering beauty of "Ornament Valley," with buttes and mesas shaped like hood ornaments, and the homely charms of Radiator Springs, one of Route 66's battered, eccentric hamlets, work over Lightning. Gradually, he regains emotions and a soul.

Adam Sandler travestied Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town when he remade it as Mr. Deeds. Cars revitalizes Capra's affection for small-town America and Preston Sturges' appetite for tearing through its placid surface in films like The Miracle of Morgan's Creek.

Lasseter and his animators and writers (including the late story whiz Joe Ranft) use unconventional characters to tap into every aspect of America's love for cars - as vehicles of self-expression and experimentation as well as speed. Sarge, the Army jeep who's dying to put SUVs through basic training, lives next to Fillmore, the 1960 VW bus who cooks up his own alternate fuels and inveighs against big-oil conspiracies. Ramone, the customizing king of Ramone's Body Art, an Impala with pin-stripes and flaming details, is married to All-American Flo, the tail-finned, two-tone aqua-and-white show car with parking lights that register as dimples. The eponymous proprietor of Luigi's Casa Della Tires, a 1959 Fiat 500 with a yen for Ferraris, has a wonderful taste for retro accessories (he prefers white-walls) and a sidekick named Guido who's nothing more than a pint-sized Italian forklift.

The love story that evolves is remarkably persuasive for a cartoon or for any contemporary romantic comedy. The lovers don't jarringly clash; Sally and Lightning are simply at different stages in their life trajectories. Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), the snaggle-toothed tow truck of "Tow Mater Towing and Salvage," becomes the attracting opposite whose pull on Lightning helps transform him. Just as Sally elevates Lightning to high-school/college flirtation level, Mater provides a stabilizing buddyhood. With ineffable rusty warmth, Mater brings out the base-level humanity in self-deprecating schoolyard jokes, like saying his pal Sally "loves me for my body."

This organic Southwestern community - including its own organic-food (or --fuel) nut, Fillmore - reflects the marvelous and merry landscape that surrounds it. Bruce Springsteen once celebrated the open-air Texas sculpture made up of half-buried Eldorados and De Villes called the Cadillac Ranch. Lasseter creates a Cadillac Range. And he's equally deft at urban humor. The competition between the racing circuit's reigning old pro, the King, and his ruthless longtime challenger, Chick Hicks, who lusts for the King's "Dinoco" sponsorship, has the same edge as the sharpest corners of The Incredibles. So does the appearance of Lightning's agent, Harv, as a voice on a cell phone.

Pixar always turns in-jokes inside out, so that everyone can enjoy them. Lasseter employs Jeremy Piven, the super-agent from HBO's hot show The Entourage, as Harv. Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the hosts of NPR's Car Talk, become Rusty and Dusty Rust-Eze, Lightning's savvy, regular-guy sponsors. Overall, this may be Pixar's best-cast movie yet. Wilson and Hunt make a peppy couple. Lasseter jettisons Wilson's usual drawling for hepped-up chatter, and Hunt gets to be the breezy, winsome and irresistible Jean Arthur heroine she was born to be. Newman, as Doc Hudson, can do gravelly wisdom without a touch of the blowhard, and Paul Dooley, as Sarge, shoots straight barbs at George Carlin's Fillmore, who returns nothing but curves. Tony Shalhoub and Cheech Marin imbue Luigi and Ramone (respectively) with juicy ethnicity. Even as that constant ranter Chick Hicks, Michael Keaton reminds us of his full-throttle commitment as an actor.

Lasseter's inclusive, utterly distinctive sensibility makes Cars all that it can be. His embrace of the comic-dramatic friction between innovation and tradition infiltrates every aspect of the movie - the look, the characters, the story. Without anything as conventional as a simple win, the wrap-up, like the movie, is completely winning.

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