Fall of Pixar

One of the movies that I watched over Thanksgiving break was Cars 2, the only Pixar movie I didn't see in theaters and easily the worst Pixar movie. Granted, it wasn't as bad as any direct-to-DVD Disney film, but it sucked in a lot of ways. Granted, there were some funny moments (especially concerning the first part of the film, which takes place in Japan) and all sorts of funny euphemisms, such as the antagonists showing what remains of a car (in a "crushed car cube" form) and Mater's "oil leak", and of course the whole plot revolves around a race around a converted SUV promoting a non-oil alternative fuel which turns out to be a ruse, and he's just trying to discredit alternative fuels, although Sarge won't switch to alternative fuels.

The whole thing looks like it was made solely for the merchandise: unless you've been living in a hole all summer, you know that they've been promoting the heck out of Cars 2, and the executives at Disney knew that for kids, Mater (the main character in Cars 2, another reason why people don't like it so much) IS popular with the kids.

Is it good? Not really, no. It's less than half as good as Cars was (and given how weak Cars was, that's saying something).
Is it bad? Not really, either. There are many recent animation films worse than Cars 2, and it's not nearly as bad as most Dreamworks Animations films, and you know that there are some awful ones in their back catalog.