Powerful

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Boy, was I ever let down by this lousy, low-budget piece of Australian junk.From start to finish, this film continually struck me as being equivalent to a limp-wristed project carelessly slapped together by some incompetent, ass-backwards film students from Idiots-ville.Filled to over-flowing with lifeless, unattractive characters, rambling dialogue, terrible acting and long, "WTF?" stretches where absolutely nothing happens, The Cars That Ate Paris's title was, without question, about 10x more intriguing than was the result of its dumb and virtually humorless story.This is one of those truly grate-on-your-nerves films where right from the word "go!" one immediately senses that its scriptwriters were trying way too hard to elevate this one to the status of a bizarre & quirky "Cult" film. But, they failed miserably.I've got nothing, whatsoever, good to say about this dreary & asinine picture. Even its much-anticipated final climax (where the cars come to eat Paris) was totally anti-climatic. In fact, this finale was downright stupid.Thank goodness for the joy of fast-forwarding!

Peter Weir must have been an angry young man as his first film makes fun of every level of society. The corrupt, bumptious, mayor of the two-bit New South Wales town is the obvious fall guy, but no single character escapes Weir's wrath. You might expect the wild, local youths with their vitality to provide the film's conscience, but they are ultimately portrayed as dumb, reactionary yokels whose demise is mocked. Tellingly the film's key line, 'I can drive', is used to belittle the death of the gang member we get to know best. However, Weir goes too far by mocking the audience. Our hero is a pathetic emotional wreck who barely speaks, while many scenes are dragged out with ponderous monologues and plodding development, as if Weir is saying 'you've consumed this sort of rubbish before, now I am going to serve it up to you in a dark satire. Can you tell the difference?'. The Cars That Ate Paris is best watched with the fast forward in your hand, but do not skip the brilliant finale in which the sordid little town gets its just desserts.

Weir's first film is hardly a milestone in the history of cinema. The title is misleading inasmuch that it promises or at least suggests light-hearted goofiness. It's supposed to be a satire of some sort, but you won't find any laughs here. There is a weird feel to the whole film. It's about a small town of people who make car accidents happen so that they can loot and what not. For some reason Weir draws a clear line between the town's youth and the town's older folk; the youth is out of control and relishes the violence, while the older citizens are calm, collected, and regard the whole thing as merely business. This distinction between generations is what Weir was trying to get at. Right? But what exactly his point was, I'm not sure.If you want early Weir, ignore this, and watch "Picnic At Hanging Rock" instead: his best movie.

This truly odd and eccentric black comedy is especially worth checking out in order to notice how drastically Peter Weir's filming style changed from dared and out-of-the-ordinary cult in the 1970's to dull and politically correct rubbish in the 1980's, 1990's and 2000's. No matter how popular and acclaimed films like "Dead Poets Society", "Master & Commander" and "The Truman Show" are, they're blunt compared to the uniqueness and virility of "The Cars that Ate Paris". At least this film doesn't feature tiresome morality speeches and here the dialogues are, in fact, surprisingly controversial most of the time. For example; when explaining to total strangers that you accidentally killed a old man by accidentally running your car over him, do you expect them to reply with: "Yeah, those old pedestrians are a real problem, aren't they?" Welcome to Paris; a remote little outback Australian town where the people go to church, love their families and where the economy entirely thrives on one thing: car crashes! The whole town assists in deliberately causing accidents and then use the parts and accessories as currency to buy stuff in the shops. The outsiders from the accidents either end up in the graveyard, as medical guinea pigs in the local hospital or – as in protagonist Arthur Waldo's case – as brand new residents of Paris and close friends to the mayor. It's truly close to brilliant how Peter Weir manages to sustain the friendly and nonthreatening tone throughout the whole movie. All members of the community are basically insane psychopaths, yet you symphatize with them a lot more because the "hero" (Arthur) is such an antipathetic loser and the young generation (that eventually revolts against the town's ancient habits) are boisterous and uncanny freaks. Even the mayor, who's really the evil mastermind, is portrayed like a jolly figure with whom you'd love to chat. I know that most people wish to forget their viewing of "The Cars that Ate Paris" because it moves slow and looks dark, but the basic premise really is one of the best horror ideas ever coming from Australian cinema. And that WV Beetle covered in spikes is a highly memorable piece of scenery!