Hey look, another sequel! This time it's for Disney/Pixar's license-to-print-money, Cars. I actually hadn't seen the original Cars or its sequel because it was a concept that never appealed to me enough to bother, so I actually went back and watched both before I headed off to Cars 3.
I found that Cars 1 is, as others before me have noted, basically just Doc Hollywood with talking cars. Since I liked Doc Hollywood, and Cars did an ok job of translating it (existential questions about this universe aside), I enjoyed it.
Cars 2 was just terrible. If Cars 1 is Doc Hollywood, Cars 2 is like Mr. Bean or The Tuxedo, one of those awful movies where some dumbass character trips their way into a spy movie and is comically better at being a spy than the professionals.
Meanwhile Cars...