A Look at Disney Mater Mondays: Mater The Greater

Hello & welcome back. Today, I continue my look at the Cars Toon aka Mater’s Tall Tales as I look at Mater The Greater.

The plot here like most of the shorts in this series follow a simple story with the same set up.   Mater tells McQueen about something that he used to be and in this case, it was a daredevil.  Now perhaps, it’s because I think of this person when I hear the term daredevil but while watching this short,  Evel Knievel came to mind. Now that’s just me but  that is what came to mind but Mater has nothing on Evel.  Although this is the first time while watching one of these shorts that I thought he was embellishing a bit because Mater’s voice over seem to contradict everything that was shown in I don’t know if you’d call these flashbacks.  I think part of the terminology works there but I’m still not sure. Now something else I wish to bring up regarding all of these shorts is that even though these stories seem far fetched, there is something that solidifies them to the audience as being true but they just seem to out there. Take for example, at the end of this short, Mater’s pit crew, Lug & Nutty show up at Flo’s.  Now this is a minor complaint but I’m probably looking into it too much.

Mater The Greater voiced by Larry The Cable Guy

Now like most of these shorts, Mater was likable and even though I complained about the contradiction I brought up when talking about the plot,  I actually found that rather humorous.    Because the embellishment factor really does work here and as always with these shorts, I love the design for Mater because it is just gorgeous to look at.  Also this scene right here has one of my favorite jokes in the short as it looks as though Mater is about to jump over a line of cars but just drives over them.  It’s a simple joke but it gets to me every single time and then another little moment that I love is seeing Mater going through the air on a stunt plane, who happened to be named Props McGee.

Lighting McQueen voiced by  Keith Ferguson

Again as with Mater, I love the look of McQueen in this short as it is just hilarious.  Now as I mentioned last time,  in these shorts McQueen gets hurt and this is one of the few times in these shorts that I actually find a bit humorous. As you see in this short, Mater and McQueen are about to jump over Carburetor Canyon.  Which I’m assuming it is this world’s version of the Grand Canyon.

This is then followed by McQueen asking what happened next and Mater informs that he didn’t make it. Implying that he died.  This was followed by a moment of silence.  Just that brief moment was so funny in how McQueen was there but everyone thought he was dead.  Now if your wondering about the buck teeth that McQueen’s wearing.  Well, earlier in the short,  we see a buck tooth vendor along with Mia & Tia wearing a pair of them. I didn’t bring this up last time but Mia & Tia appear in a majority of these shorts.  The only one off hand that I know that they didn’t appear in was Time Travel Mater.

I have some minor qualms with this short but all in all, I liked it very much. I don’t know if I’d call it one of the stronger shorts in the line up but it is highly enjoyable as it has a lot of cute moments in it.   Would I call this short memorable?  Hmm no, not really.  But at the same time that does not make this short this bad but rather, it is a bit stronger than the first entry in these shorts but I’ve noticed that these first few shorts aren’t very memorable. I like it enough but it isn’t anywhere towards the top of my favorites but I will give Pixar credit in that I always love the different looks that they come up with for Mater. Join me next week as I take a look at the final short of season 1of this series as I take a look at…