Comedy
Dead Boy Detectives
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
Road trip.
Hear those two words, and you might sigh fondly at memories of family vacations. You might recoil in horror, recalling tedium and car sickness and the too-familiar mantra, “Are we there yet?”
But if you’re a car, your reaction to the words road trip might be quite a bit different. Right?
Lightning McQueen is a car. His best friend, Mater, is not a car, technically speaking. Rather, he’s a tow truck. But let’s not quibble over definitions.
For years, Mater and McQueen have lived in the quaint, completely car-populated town of Radiator Springs. And that’s been just fine. But when Mater learns that his sister is getting hitched (so to speak), he and McQueen decide to do what cars were meant to do: take to the open road and drive, drive, drive.
And what might they see on the way? More importantly, what might viewers see?
McQueen and Mater indeed see plenty in Cars on the Road. Each tiny episode (about eight minutes each) features a new adventure, where our piston-powered protagonists encounter dinosaurs, ghosts and (worst yet) clowns—all of which are also cars, of course.
The dino-cars, we’re told, roamed the earth millions and millions of years ago. Ghost cars might just spark (I just can’t stop myself) all the same questions that ghost people would (and a great many more). We even hear a reference to a séance.
And many of the episodes contain pop-culture references to much less kid-friendly fare: One takes place in a Mad Max-like environment. A haunted hotel has a few winking nods to The Shining. And so on. Given those concerns, sensitive families of young viewers may want to (ahem) steer clear of Cars on the Road. But for families who can navigate those speed bumps, Cars on the Road will be high-octane fun.
Lightning McQueen and Mater set off on their cross-country road trip for Mater’s sister’s wedding. Their first stop is the educational theme park Cartaceous Gardens, where they learn about the dino-cars of old. And that night, Mater has a seriously strange dream.
In his dream, he imagines that he and McQueen are dodging all manner of automotive dinosaurs (which take on the feel of stop-motion creatures from old-time monster movies). Dinos bite each other and grab fleeing cars with their metal mouths. In a non-dream educational video, one dino-car eats another. (The worst, ahem, car-nage takes place away from the camera.)
We hear about how these creatures roamed the earth millions of years ago. There’s also a bit of name-calling directed at the creatures, including “overgrown varmint.” As the road trip begins, Mater confesses, “My sister and I don’t get along that well.”
Mater and McQueen get caught in a rainstorm and decide to spend the night in a creepy motel.
The show takes some cues from Disney’s own Haunted Mansion, but it also leans heavily on Stanley Kubrick’s R-rated horror film The Shining. We see, for instance, “Racecar” written backwards in red (a nod to the “redrum/murder” line from both Stephen King’s book and Kubrick’s movie adaptation of it). Two ghostly twin cars ask McQueen to “Come and race with us!” And McQueen sees an elevator open and green antifreeze pour out of it. “That’s a lot of antifreeze,” McQueen simply says.) We see other ghost cars, too, including some that could be pretty scary for little viewers.
While most of the ghostly activity again takes place in the conceit of a dream, we do have indications that the “ghosts” here are real. We hear someone say “Jeez.”
McQueen and Mater drive to some salt flats, where many speed-oriented vehicles are testing their mettle (and metal). Mater—wanting to experience the thrill of real speed for once—accepts an offer to get a quick overhaul that takes him past the sound barrier and beyond.
“Watch out for the speed demon,” an old-timer warns Mater. Turns out, he’s not just saying the equivalent of “don’t let the bedbugs bite.” When Mater shoots past 640 miles an hour and begins shaking apart, he sees the “demon,” some sort of car-spirit that’ll be shepherding Mater to the afterlife. There’s also a reference to a séance, and Mater has an out-of-auto-body experience. He does trick the spirit into letting him survive the speedy experience, though, and the spirit shrugs her shoulders. “I suppose I can let one slip through the cracks,” she says.
Mater says, “Dad gum.”
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
An elf mage contemplates on connection and regret as she watches her human friends grow old and pass away.
