Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)
"Mater's Tall Tales" is a collection of so far (as of 2016) 11 short film about Mater (and Lightning McQueen), so this watch will only be rewarding to fans of the "Cars" franchise. All films taken together run for slightly over 45 minutes, so the average runtime is around 4 minutes, actually between 2 and 7 minutes, with the longest being also the most famous "Tokyo Mater", in my opinion possibly the weakest entry though. Oh yeah and I really wonder if Lightning McQueen has amnesia as apparently all of Mater's tales are true and Lightning has forgotten completely about everything??? Anyway, I cannot say I was well-entertained by these short films, with 1 or 2 exceptions perhaps. Not too surprising though as I believe "Cars" is among Pixar's weakest. So I guess you should only check this out if you consider (for whatever reason) "Cars" among Pixar's finest. Not recommended.
mike48128
Good for very little kids as it is based on the same titled Disney picture book. A bit repetitive. I saw it on "Starz" (Disney) and kids don't like to sit thru even short front and end titles, which every segment has. Maybe they "blended" it all together on the video? (Probably not.) Tow-Mater spins a series of improbable tall tales including him as a doctor, rock star, airplane pilot,etc. He has a "close encounter" with a friendly flying saucer. All as "Tow Mater" the scruffy tow truck with a Southern "drawl" and buck teeth. Typical "Pixar" computer animation, even though it's not made by the original California studio. Best viewed in chapters, as running it all at once overwhelmed (and bored) a little 4-year-old. (It would be like running a "Looney Tunes" marathon, even though it's a mere 38 minutes long.) I think I like it better than the kid does!
Robert
Pixar is known for creating really good stories and putting them in animation. I noticed that in many polls on the Internet, Cars is one of the lowest voted options out of all of the movies. So it's no surprise that most won't find this series of shorts to be funny or at least Pixar worthy.However, I must admit that they did a good job since they are shorts, cartoon shows, which kids will be watching. It doesn't need a fancy back story or anything. So the Pixar worthy-ness isn't essential.I rate this 8/10 because of the humor with the shorts. The shorts are all genre's, so a rock band, going to the moon, being a hero, bull fighting, spy movies, even monster truck driving and wrestling! I laughed a lot during the UFO episode. Also, in the bonus features, one of the ideas was a stunt double, and the pun at the end with Mater saying why he doesn't do it anymore with "they do it in CGI these days" was classic! 8/10
Russ Howe (PersonalTrainerRussHowe)
My 4 year old loved this DVD. Perhaps even more than the Cars movie itself. It's far more fast-paced and slapstick than the full movie, that's for sure, and the main character switches from Lightning McQueen (not played by Owen Wilson here) to his Cars sidekick Mater.The lovable truck tells all kind of far fetched stories which had my son laughing along all the way, each one adding the twist when McQueen said he didn't believe the story he would get dragged into the fantasy by Mater who would play mind-games with McQueen and make him think he was there when it happened. That could have got repetitive, but my son loved it every time, especially when he knew it was coming towards the end of these shorts.Great DVD, and gives good hope that the upcoming Cars II will be a lot more fun than the first one. Not that it was a bad film, but at times it was incredibly slow for a children's movie. This is a wonderful purchase.
AD
