Thank heaven for Pixar Animation Studios.

Just when you think that all the original ideas are gone and Hollywood only makes crap, along comes “Cars,” another smart, sweet, visually gorgeous and howlingly funny family picture from the studio that pioneered the genre of digital animation.

Pixar’s latest triumph is also its most narrowly focused, catering to the popularity of the NASCAR culture – but good-naturedly skewering it at the same time. Every character in this movie is a motor vehicle of some sort, from the thousands of fans filling the speedway stadium (did you know that cars do The Wave by turning their headlights on?) to the bugs (Volkswagen, of course) that buzz around a light fixture.

The first and last 15 minutes of the movie are high-speed, high-stakes racetrack scenes featuring several cameos by the voices of popular racecar drivers. Devotees of the sport will undoubtedly get the most entertainment out of these scenes. Not a fan? Don’t worry – you won’t lose anything crucial.

What everyone will identify with is the cast of characters, starting with a hotshot rookie racer named Lightning McQueen. Perfectly voiced with charismatic arrogance by Owen Wilson, he’s poised to win the coveted Piston Cup and superstardom – hogging all the credit that other racers share with their pit crews. Lightning’s crew calls it quits after one snub too many.

When the big race ends in a three-way tie between Lightning, veteran champ The King (Richard Petty) and perennial runner-up Chick Hicks (a gratifyingly obnoxious Michael Keaton), officials set up a tiebreaker race in California to crown the winner. After a visually impressive travel montage, some shenanigans by a posse of neon-decked street racers and a panic-induced spree of civic destruction, Lightning ends up alone and in a mess of trouble in the sleepy town of Radiator Springs, somewhere on Route 66.

As his punishment for ruining the town’s main thoroughfare, the town’s judge and mechanic (voiced by Paul Newman) sentences him to resurface the road before he can leave.

Here’s where the genius of the Pixar crew shines. Not only are the landscapes, town sets, chrome and metalflake finishes breathtaking to behold, but what happens to Lightning’s character over the next few days is a thing of beauty as well. Without a trace of artifice, the team of Pixar writers allow Lightning to experience what he never knew he was missing – friendship, humility, trust and the joy of making others happy. These are the values we all hope our kids learn. And if Pixar movies are the only places some of today’s kids get that message, that’s why I say … thank heaven for Pixar.

Oh yes. “Cars” is also fun. Very, very fun. Adults will be hooting over tiny (probably unscripted) background jokes; kids will roar with laughter at the goofy antics of cars that talk. Larry the Cable Guy walks away with the movie as a buck-toothed hillbilly tow truck who adopts Lightning as his best friend, sharing with him the joys of “tractor-tipping.” The scene with the two of them scaring dozing tractors is a riot – the poor little kid sitting behind me was laughing so hard I thought he was going to pass out in his popcorn.

Be sure to stay in your seat through the ending credits for Pixar’s trademark jokes on itself. The sequence shows the characters from “Cars” enjoying several drive-in movies that happen to be vehicular versions of Pixar hits like “Toy Car Story” and “Monster Trucks, Inc.”