Say it ain't so, Cars 2. Say it ain't so. (Or: Pixar Finally Fails?)

Lightning McQueen, excellent car

(Update: I maybe shouldn't have completely trusted the 38 percent. Details below.)

The wife and I are huge Pixar fans. Pretty much whatever movie they put out, we'll go see, because everything they do they do with obvious ambition and usually, they do it excellently. I mean, it takes them three years to make each movie. You have to be ridiculously ambitious to do the things they do as well as they do time and time again. 

Then this morning, my wife tells me, "Aw man, Cars 2 has 38 percent on Rotten Tomatoes." 

As of 8:45 a.m. 6/24/11

I'm not a movie critic, and honestly, I don't love the idea of movie critics in general. So this isn't a criticism or anything ... it's just me being sort of shocked, and unpacking why I'm shocked. It basically boils down to this: Pixar is awesome. And I hate to see a company so good at what they do put out a product that is, by and large, considered bad.

So when Katie told me that, I felt the slightest twinge of—bom-bom-bommm—emotion. I know, I know, it's movies, and I'm a total weirdo for getting emotional about movies. But dude, I love movies, and I know how impossibly hard they are to make, and, well, Pixar's always so awesome. I mean, I cried at the end of Toy Story 3. I really did, and I DO NOT CRY at MOVIES. I get goosebumps a lot, and I get lumps in my throat a lot, but TEARS? Never tears. 

I didn't expect Cars 2 to be anything groundbreaking or inspirational or whatever, but dude—it's PIXAR. I didn't expect it to be getting 38 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, either. At least it's getting 77 percent from the audience, so that's something—but I can't think of a Pixar movie that's ever been below 90 percent on both, or even 95 percent. That's saying something. 

In fact, I'm so nice (and obsessive, apparently), that I'm going to list them all for you right here and now. And in looking them up, I found something sort of amazing. Only one was ever rated by critics below 91 percent. Guess which one? Yep. The first Cars.

• Toy Story (1995) - 100 percent
• A Bug's Life (1998) - 91 percent
• Toy Story 2 (1999) - 100 percent
• Monsters, Inc. (2001) - 95 percent
• Finding Nemo (2003) - 98 percent
• The Incredibles (2004) - 97 percent
• Cars (2006) - 74 percent
• Ratatouille (2007) - 96 percent
• Wall-E (2008) - 96 percent
• Up (2009) - 98 percent (and my niece Malia's favorite movie of all time)
• Toy Story 3 (2010) - 99 percent
• Cars 2 (2011) - 38 percent

So yeah, as an ambitious sonofagun who gets obsessed with others who are also uber-ambitious and also uber-successful ... that bums me out. Not to tears or even to a lump in the throat. OK, it's not a big deal at all. Just a surprise, I guess. 

That said, it makes me glad to see Owen Wilson—the voice of Cars 2 main character Lightning McQueen—getting steady work now. You've probably already forgotten (because we forget what happened three days ago thanks to the Internet constantly pumping new information into our fragile little brains), but OW tried to kill himself nearly four years ago. You never know what you're getting from these Hollywood types, but it seems like the guy has pulled himself back together, and he's still successful. 

Crappy movie or not, at least Cars 2 has that. 

THE UPDATE: Well apparently Roger Ebert, who's pretty much the only critic I actually read, has given Cars 2 three and a half our of four stars, writing, 

At a time when some "grown-up" action films are relentlessly shallow and stupid, here is a movie with such complexity that even the cars sometimes have to pause and explain it to themselves. It mixes concerns about fossil fuels with spycraft and a lot of grand prix racing where more is at stake than who wins. And it has a new hero: The shiny red Lightning McQueen (voice of Owen Wilson) is eclipsed by the rusty, buck-toothed tow truck named Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), who was only a supporting vehicle in the first film.

Full review here.

You know, my younger brother Logan and I were talking the other day about how absurd it is to base your opinions of something on what someone else has written, on what critics say. Looks like Ebert has prove that true. And so it looks like I'll be giving Cars 2 a chance, after all. 

So what do you think? Are the critics all wrong?