Knockoff products
fascinate me. The way that someone can deceive so many people and skirt the loss so lightly
either by acting with anonymity or by simply sliding by with nothing more than a loose imitation.
That's why I've decided to dedicate an entire month to seeking out these elusive products for a closer inspection.
This is knockoff November.
[Royalty free discordant music plays]
First up, "The Little cars in The Great Race." Mockbusters of Pixar films are surprisingly potent.
They're the sort that you're most likely to find on DVD shelves across the country.
They're arguably the easiest target for duplication because they are so often filled with terms that simply cannot be trademarked.
I'm pretty surprised I haven't literally just come across one of these called "Cars."
Who's going to stop you? Did they trademark the word "cars"?
I don't think so.
This is a knockoff of a movie that was a knockoff of another movie, and when I looked for this knockoff, specifically,
I almost bought the wrong knockoff. We are pretty far down the rabbit hole at this point. Does it go deeper?
I almost don't want to know. We start off on a race where a certain little yellow car
starts off around the rear but quickly is able to outpace the competition. Just as he's reached the front of the line,
He's horrified to see his best friend dead ahead in his own path.
[Dialogue] What happened?
Cruise! Wake up, Cruise! Quick! Come on, Mr. V is coming. Come on, Lugnut! You
woke me up in the best part. I was winning the big race.
[Commentary] I was about to commit vehicular manslaughter.
This is our main protagonist, a yellow car worker named Cruise, alongside his best friend,
basically Mater. [Dialogue] Winning the big race? [laughter] Yeah, in your dreams.
[Commentary] I don't really know what I expected with this movie,
but this certainly was an apt introduction. The company that makes these films, Vídeo Brinquedo, are some of the most notorious
mockbusterers out there, having a catalog saturated and soaking with infamy.
Being based in Brazil, Brinquedo creates their films set to a Spanish audio track, leaving the English track feeling slightly off.
This only slightly justifies why the animation is so stilted and jerky.
[Character laughter] You thought I
[Laughter]
I was really talking about, [laughter] I thought I was going crazy.
[laughter] Sorry kid. [laughter] Ain't that a kick in the head? [laughter] You see, kid,
I guess I really didn't know what you were talking about! [laughter]
[Weird panda noise]
[Commentary] Voice actors are trained to be very attentive to lip flaps when they dub something that's foreign, which is usually an easy task, as
long as the animation is simple and the line has the right number of syllables.
But when you have features where the animation makes absolutely no goddamn sense, then the consequence is going to be that the voice actors might
accidentally just say the lines weird.
The best voice acting in this special comes from the people who are clearly just ignoring the visuals entirely and doing their own thing because
in most scenes the only noise that would make sense to be coming out of these mouths --is
[Lip trill]
[Car speaks]- you motor-mouths can talk about? I can't stand this time of year! No one talks about anything else except race here, race there,
race every whichaway.
[Commentary] I'm having a little bit of a problem piecing together exactly what's happening right now
probably because with each second I get more and more confused with how this universe works. Wait a minute, uh, are those two taxis?
Two taxis to what? They live in a universe entirely populated by vehicles! Who could possibly need a taxi?
Oh wait. No no, no. I'm sorry,
they're delivery men.
But then why are they dressed like taxis?
The boss notes that he's tired of hearing about the race and asks the two why they aren't doing real work since they're both on the clock.
[Dialogue] Sorry to disagree, Mr. V. I love it when race season begins!
Raceopolis really gets going when the racers from all over the country come to town for the big race!
[Commentary] Jesus Christ, if I had to hear the word "race" that often I'd probably hate the concept of one as well.
The boss's niece then shows up and joins in the conversation, apparently being quite exhilarated by the upcoming event.
The main two guys in the scene keep doing this weird thing where
they'll, like, wink at each other or snicker at random,
and I figured that the only thing this could mean would be that in the Spanish dub
she's constantly laying down accidental innuendos,
and in the American dub, they figured that wasn't really appropriate for a children's movie and they cut all of that out.
I watched a couple of Brinquedo films preparing for this and this seems to be a thing that happens a lot.
It doesn't help that I'm pretty sure all of these films are dubbed by 4kids.
[Dialogue] Ladies, do you have to be so critical?
[Commentary] So the boss's niece says that as the race is the next day,
they should all go home and get nice and polished for the big event.
Cruise and Lugnut take the long route and talk about their relationship qualms along the way.
[Dialogue] "What are you talking about?"
[Awkward pause]
"Good enough."
[Awkward pause]
[Deep laughter]
[Commentary] I didn't do that. No, no you're thinking that I like edited the audio, and I zoomed in on him suddenly,
but naw, that wasn't me. The movie did that. It was meant to be that way.
So Cruise was worried that he's too good to date the boss's niece and at one point
we are forced to sit through this
uncomfortable moment where he starts to try and talk about her in a very erotic tone.
[Dialogue] I can't stop thinking of her, those fenders, that rear bumper, and those headlights, aw, those headlights
[Commentary] Once you make that line about car parts sound all fucking weird it makes all the other ones sound weird by comparison.
[Dialogue] Did someone say race? Ooh, that gets my motor going!
[Commentary] Here's the thing I never got about the "Cars" franchise:
So, do they still have engines, or are the mouths where the engines should be? I mean, do they
have, like, organs, or is it all, like, nuts and bolts?
Lugnut gets Cruise to admit that he's in love with Coop and, after some deep thinking,
Lug thinks of a plan to win her heart.
[Dialogue] Say! What if you invited Coop to the big race tomorrow?
[Commentary] That took you that long to come up with? Big event that everyone's been talking about all day
that she is already going to whether you invite her or not, the thing the town is named after,
that wasn't the first thing you consider as a possibility?
This scene - never - ends.
At first, it's kind of nice to have a sane, slow moment with our main characters, but then you realize it's only being done
so they can loop the same
animation over and over and over and over and then, dude, I've been doing this bit a little too often.
[Dialogue] I want to hear you say it. Come on, let me hear it! I'm Cruise!
The "wheel deal."
[Commentary] The guy voicing Mater here, he's, uh...
[pause]
How do I put this in the right set of words...
[pause]
I think he's shitposting. Yeah, I'm pretty sure this dude in the booth
just realized at some point that he was dubbing a completely meaningless film that no one would ever watch and enjoy,
so he just started blurting out complete nonsense as a joke and then the director was all like, "Oh, we're putting that in."
[Dialogue] Yeah, you think so? [singing] Get your motor runnin'... Head out on the highway!
[Commentary over singing] Yes, he starts singing "Born to be Wild," and it's not just a single line either
he goes through the entire chorus, twice, I'm pretty sure. And it's clear
this is just a one voice actor messing around on his own because the other guy keeps having these
completely unrelated pieces of dialogue that are spliced in the middle.
It's
it's beautiful. [singing stops]
The next day, Cruise and Lug go to the race stadium to buy tickets where they pass two of the most famous
racers from the upcoming race.
One is the bad guy, and the other is the town's idol. Coop shows up after this and Lug tries to distract her to not
draw attention to Cruise's actions which, I don't know, why. It's, it's not weird that he's buying tickets to the race.
It's, it's pretty, I imagine it's common.
[Dialogue] Have you seen Cruise?
Cruise? Oh, Cruise? [mumbling] Hey, ya dollface, nice headlights.
[pause]
Oh, hi
Thanks, I guess.
[Commentary] Alright, are headlights tits in this universe? Is that the joke? Is there a joke?
So this black racing car starts hitting on Coop and invites her backstage to watch him practice laps with his crew,
but then Coop sees him start to yell at some of his workers and overall act like a total diva and grows less fond of him.
Cruise starts to mope over the fact that there's no way that a girl like Coop would ever go for him,
but Mater tells him not to worry about it and that if he really gives up he can never win. Their boss then shows up and
has Cruise start his daily deliveries and
confides in Mater that the company isn't doing too well and in order to save it so he doesn't have to fire the two of them,
he sends Mater off to get all of his life savings out of the Racetropolis bank.
Mater goes and gets the money,
but at the last minute he bets it all on racing - Wait, what the - what the actual fuck
[Dialogue] Bet everything on the Raceopolis team and let it ride!
[Commentary] That's, that's not like a misunderstanding -
that's an actual dick thing to do. You can't, you can't just take someone else's money.
Their life savings and gamble it all away on a race on a hunch without their permission! What the,
what the actual fuck, Mater! So that night, the evil racer from earlier spikes the gasoline of his opponent and drives away,
leaving a little more than a single tire track.
The next night, the champ for Raceopolis is getting ready for the big track, when he takes a sip of the tainted oil
and suddenly collapses. Meanwhile, Mater lets it slip that he had bet all of the boss's money on the champ.
[Dialogue] How could you, Lugnut? I can't believe you did something like that! But, it's the champ, sir!
He can't lose, he's fast and furious!
[Commentary] So the oil spike is announced, and the police show up to - Okay, he's dead.
He is dead. There is no saying he isn't dead. He is just dead. The police find the single set of tire tracks, but
they have no way to quickly identify the owner of the stain.
Without a racer for the big event, Raceopolis will be disqualified, and the boss will have lost all of his money,
so Cruise steps up to take the place of the champ.
[Laughter]
[Dialogue] That's a good one!
[Laughter]
You're my throne going
[Laughter]
[Commentary] Alright, so it looks like we've gotten off to a smooth start, as little - Oh! He had to stop there to speed up.
He's not moving. You're not moving. Oh, whoa, he sped up there, made up for it. Oh,
flying car now,
Cosmo cop. Alright, well, where's Cruise? Oh, there he is, he's catching up. Alright. Yeah, you can do it man,
you can do it.
Just rear-end him. Oh might be a twist, might be the character we've never seen before who wins.
[Car sounds]
Just stick your tongue out.
[Dialogue] He'll do it! I know you will!
[Commentary] How long do you think this took to render, like, two days? This whole movie?
What?
Did he just cheat by spitting gum onto the tra- Oh. Oh, this is the greatest movie I've ever seen in my entire life!
So then apparently the black car is in the lead again,
but then he runs over a bunch of spikes that Cruise somehow manages to avoid -
You'd think that this was a trap that he'd set for someone else and then accidentally ran over himself,
but the way the dialogue is set up, it seems like this was set up by someone else entirely.
[Dialogue] Oh, no one rangles the Rangler!
[Commentrary] It's never explained who did it, though. Uh, perhaps it's just because I'm not invested in the lore enough.
I'm sure one of the nine sequel films explains this.
So, surprise, Cruise wins the race.
[Dialogue] You went the extra mile! You earned your racing stripes today, kid! He's not a kid!
He's the man! He won the race fair and square.
[Commentary] Okay, so the champ isn't dead, but he's at least crippled for life.
But then the black car drives up and starts accusing Cruise of being the one who had spiked the champ's supply so that he could
take his place, and if we hadn't clearly been shown that this wasn't the case
it's something that I would totally believe. It makes the most sense.
[Dialogue] Do you think it matches? Jumping Jehoshaphat, it's the same!
Where did you find this?
I can't say for sure,
but you may want to investigate a certain shiny black race car who signed this.
[Commentary] Shitposting so hard. The Mockbusters Wikipage on this movie says that each character is a ripoff of a major character from "Cars,"
but, honestly, other than the Mater clone, this really isn't the case at all.
I'm actually highly disappointed in this film. Of all the talk of this company being the lowest of the low,
this film is just kind of mediocre.
Main factor is that it's not too slow, I guess. It's only 32 minutes long,
so it really doesn't take that long to get through and honestly there's nothing outright offensive or upsetting about it.
It's clearly not to the level that I'd prescribe it as a "so bad that it's good" viewing experience, but
it's also not something that's really bad enough to get mad about.
Will say this though: if I had to choose between this and the original "Cars," I'd definitely watch this again.