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Pixar has taken a page from their Disney overlords and started training kids at a young age on which products to love. This movie directly targets them rather than adults, which is an astute business practice and one that will pay dividends over the next five years as the kids age and ask for more expensive birthday presents. In other to get them hooked, Cars 2 is created with a focus upon appealing to kids, and adults seem to resent this since Pixar movies are the one time they can take their children to the movies without having to be bored to death by an insipid story. Theoretically. Over the past 18 months, we've seen a historic run of quality family films that negates this premise somewhat yet I'm still seeing mega-harsh criticism of Cars 2 for being un-Pixar-ian.

I think Matthew is correct when he points out that some critics are able to judge the film on its own merits while many others are not. I simply disagree with the former ones, because it's hard for me to say that Cars 2 is a bad film. It's not. I see bad films all the time. I just watched The Rite and Due Date. I know what a bad film is. Cars 2 is a genial exercise in giving kids what they want and it works well enough for adults who like spy films. It's a passable summer popcorn movie. Many critics are not describing it as such due to the fact that it has fallen victim to unreasonable expectations based upon previous Pixar titles. Oddly, the reverse was true last year with Toy Story 3 in that it was overrated due to its being placed on a pedestal because of the characters involved. Hopefully, Brave will fall in the middle and be judged based upon its own merits.

I got it bad, got it bad, got it bad.

Kim Hollis: Bad Teacher opened to $31.6 million. How did Sony pull off such a solid result? Do you think Cameron Diaz's presence was key to the opening?

Joshua Pasch: I think the biggest factor here is that Bad Santa Teacher, is a comedy. It's been a full month since an adult comedy hit theaters and the summer is a time for comedy almost just as much as it is for big action movies. It had a marketplace to itself and frankly, it looked fairly funny.

I'm still very impressed by a $30 million+ opening weekend, and that's a good deal more than anything else Diaz anchors on her own. It'll give her quote a nice bump since she was clearly betting top billing in the marketing here, but at the end of the day, I think you have to consider it an outlier more than any indication of an uptick in her overall popularity.

Bruce Hall: I definitely think Joshua is on to something. But although the reviews I've seen for Bad Teacher are well into the lukewarm range, we can't deny that this movie over-performed. Is there more at work here? Cameron Diaz puts out a definite naughty girlfriend vibe, and she is rarely allowed to run with it to the degree a lot of people would like to see. I think there's something to be said for that. Also, call me crazy but Justin Timberlake is an incredibly versatile talent who's far better in front of a camera than anyone has a right to expect. I'll admit it, I've enjoyed watching him develop as an actor and I don't think I'm alone. My analysis is unscientific, but this movie grossed anywhere from $6-10 million more than most people figured, and it currently is tracking best with females under 18. You can't tell me all those girls were just trying to get into an R-Rated comedy to see Cameron Diaz shake her tush and pout. Maybe I'm wrong; just throwing spaghetti here.

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