The new animated fable "Cars" is the story of a young fellow with what might be called auto-erratic tendencies. He pays too much attention to himself and must have his frame straightened, his lube changed, his wipers refurbished. Okay, so? He's a car.

Our hero, one Lightning McQueen, is some kind of sleek red sportster on the racing circuit (the voice behind the bumper is Owen Wilson's). He thinks quite highly of himself, particularly when he ties for the Piston Cup, the movie's variant of the Winston (now Nextel) Cup. A runoff between Lightning and his two opponents is set in California a week hence, even if Lightning's crew has abandoned him because of his selfish, hog-the-spotlight ways. Off he sets, in the belly of his one remaining friend, a big Peterbilt rig geared for auto transport.

Possibly the best few minutes of the film is director John Lasseter's evocation of the American landscape, or rather carscape, as the big red truck wends its way across the United States of Carmerica. The Pixar people have an extreme talent for conjuring imagery that is both soaring in its majesty but also resonant -- it's a stylization but acute enough to carry emotional meaning. And, boy, can these guys do a sky: If you've got a sentimental weakness for the hues that play across the cloud tufts as the big orb sinks behind the mountains, this is the movie for you.

"Cars" is set in a world so auto-normative that even the mountain ranges look like tailfins, the mesas have the line of '40s fenders and the hummocks are hood ornaments. Human beings? Never heard of 'em. It's the latest concoction from the geniuses at Pixar, probably the most inventive of the Computer Generated Imagery shops ("Toy Story" I and II, and "A Bug's Life" were theirs), and the film's great fun, if well under the level of the first "Toy Story."

-- Stephen Hunter

Contains nothing offensive.