How ‘Cars’ Can Be Viewed As An Adaptation Of ‘Doc Hollywood'
Image Source: Pixels Talk
Disney Pixar’s Cars (2006) was another in a long line of Pixar Studio films that was a phenomenal success for the studio, blending great computer animation with lots of intentionally funny references with a great soundtrack by artists such as Sheryl Crow, John Mayer, James Taylor, and Rascal Flatts, excellent actors and actresses such as Owen Wilson, Paul Newman, Larry the Cable Guy, Michael Keaton, Bonnie Hunt, and real-life race car driver, Richard Petty. The film’s success spawned two sequel films (a third is in development), animated shorts, and a Cars-themed area with a ride at Disneyland. Most importantly, Cars is a heartwarming and inspirational story with positive lessons for children and adults, such as good sportsmanship, humility, and valuing people and relationships more than fame, glory, and money.
Cars features a young hotshot racing car, Lightning McQueen (Wilson), who wins the opportunity to race in the Piston Cup. However, while traveling there, he gets waylaid in a forgotten desert town, Radiator Springs, where he must repair the damage he caused to the town’s main road when he gets separated from his transport trailer. While Cars is an original story with original characters, the film does bear some striking plot and thematic similarities to a forgotten (and underrated) movie from the 1990s, specifically, the film Doc Hollywood, featuring Michael J. Fox, Julie Warner, Woody Harrelson, and the late David Ogden Stiers.
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Image Source: Fancaps
In Doc Hollywood (1991), Fox plays a young hotshot doctor, Benjamin Stone, driving across the country to work in Los Angeles, where he expects to make it big as a plastic surgeon. However, while traveling to Los Angeles, he winds up crashing into a fence in the small town of Grady, South Carolina, and, consequently, is forced to stay there until he finishes the court-ordered terms of his community service, providing his services as a doctor for the small town. While both films featured different directors, characters, styles (live-action vs. animation), and settings, as well as being separated by fifteen long years, it is hard for somebody who has seen both films not to view Cars as an adaptation, or at least an homage to, Doc Hollywood, whether by accident or by design.
Plot
The plot of both films is the simplest point of comparison between both. Both films feature characters who are young hotshots with promising careers who end up waylaid in an unfamiliar place and through their experiences in that new place form new relationships and attachments that change their characters in profound ways, leading them to change the course of their lives in small and significant ways. In terms of Stone in Doc Hollywood, his experiences lead him to abandon his dreams of becoming a big-time plastic surgeon, raking in the big bucks and enjoying a life of comfort but not, as he realizes, a life with substance like what he experienced in Grady and returns.
In Cars, Lightning McQueen goes on to compete in the Piston Cup with the help of his newfound friends from Radiator Springs and, after demonstrating good sportsmanship during the race and winning a prized sponsorship, decides to make Radiator Springs his new racing headquarters, bringing fame and notoriety back to the forgotten town. McQueen also falls in love with a local female car, Sally (Hunt).
Themes
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Thematically, both films are about the value that the characters, Stone and McQueen, respectively, place on money and fame and how those values change throughout both films to value people more by the end of each of their journeys. At the start of both films, Stone and McQueen are focused on money and/or fame. Stone wants to go to Los Angeles and become a wealthy plastic surgeon.
McQueen wants to become the next king of racing. Neither of them can see the value in simplicity and people at first, however, both are forced to slow down and reassess their lives and values through their experiences with getting stuck in small towns, where people matter more than money and material things. Both Stone and McQueen resist being stuck in these small towns at first, however, by getting to know the people in the towns., they gradually become attached to them and fully embrace them.
Image Source: Fancaps
Both Stone and McQueen start to fall in love with a local woman, as well as develop friendships with many of the assorted colorful characters in their respective towns. McQueen, during the first race, treats his pit crew poorly and refuses assistance when it is needed, which nearly costs him the race. When he races in the Piston Cup, he wholeheartedly embraces his new friends from Radiator Springs when they show up to help him at the Piston Cup and even helps Mater to fulfill his dream of riding on a Helicopter. McQueen also loses the race to his main competitor, Chick McGee (Keaton), because he decides to intervene to help another of his competitors in the race, The King (Petty), who becomes endangered by McGee’s aggressive antics trying to win the race. Even though McQueen loses the race due to McGee’s behavior, McQueen is rewarded for his charitable intervention with a coveted sponsorship and audience praise.
McGee is shunned for his dangerous win-at-all-costs behavior. Stone ends up making it to Los Angeles as he had planned. However, after getting to Los Angeles, he finds his work life less satisfying than expected. When his rival for Lou’s heart, Hank (Harrelson), shows up in Los Angeles without her, it gives him another reason to return to Grady, where he (presumably) settles down with Lou and finds fulfillment in becoming the town’s full-time doctor.
Image Source: Fancaps
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