Cars Turns 20, and Broomfield, Colorado Gets Another Lap Around the Track

If you've got a kid who's never seen Lightning McQueen outrun his own ego across Route 66, or you're an adult who hasn't thought about that movie since gas was two bucks a gallon, here's your excuse: Cars is back on area screens this week, timed to its 20th anniversary, and it's landing in Broomfield just as the weather turns cool enough to make a dark theater sound appealing again. For families here who remember taking their own kids to see this the first time around, watching it with a second generation hits a little differently than a random Tuesday rerun would.

The real story behind Cars isn't really in the movie itself, it's in how long Pixar sat with it before letting it go. John Lasseter, who'd already co-directed Toy Story and A Bug's Life, reportedly kept pushing the release back, unsatisfied with the emotional core of a story about a hotshot race car who gets humbled in a forgotten desert town. That perfectionism shows. This isn't a quick cash-in concept, it's a movie that was rewritten and reworked until the studio was confident the small-town nostalgia underneath the engine noise actually landed. Two decades later, with actual small towns like Broomfield having watched chain development reshape their own main streets over the years, that nostalgia doesn't feel like a stretch.

The premise, for anyone who genuinely missed it: Lightning McQueen is a rookie race car with a swelled head, accidentally stranded in the dusty, bypassed town of Radiator Springs on his way to a championship race. Stuck there while his car gets fixed, he meets a cast of locals, including a rusted-out tow truck, a cranky doctor, and a former racing legend now selling tires, who slowly teach him that winning isn't the only thing worth chasing. It's a simple setup, deliberately old-fashioned, and it never pretends to be more complicated than that.

Here's where the reception gets genuinely interesting rather than just a rubber stamp. On Rotten Tomatoes, Cars sits at 75%, a solidly positive score suggesting most reviewers who logged an opinion leaned favorable. But Metacritic has it at 73, and Rotten Tomatoes' own average rating comes in at 6.9 out of 10, numbers that tell a slightly cooler story than the percentage alone suggests. That's a real split worth naming honestly: plenty of critics liked it, but “liked” more often than “loved.” Put those two aggregators side by side and you get a film that cleared the bar comfortably without ever threatening to run away with anyone's top-ten list.

Having sat with it again, I think that's the right read. Cars is gorgeous to look at, especially the sun-baked desert vistas, and the Radiator Springs stretch has genuine warmth that earns its slower pace. But the racing scenes and the celebrity-stunt-casting jokes haven't aged as gracefully as the quieter material, and the film runs a solid fifteen minutes longer than the story strictly needs. My honest verdict: this is a good movie, not a great one, a film that's better in memory of its best scenes than in the unbroken stretch of watching it start to finish. It's worth a rewatch with your kids, but go in expecting “charming” rather than “masterpiece,” and you won't be let down.

For Broomfield, Colorado families looking to make a weekend of it, Cars is playing now at area theaters around town, and given the anniversary timing, it's a reasonable bet it won't stick around past the next few weeks. If your household missed it the first time, or just wants an excuse for popcorn on a Saturday afternoon, this is a low-risk, warm-hearted pick. Just don't expect it to outrun its own reputation.

Facts verified as of September 30, 2026.