Weekend Forecast: Cars 2 Takes Box-Office Pole Position

The calm before the Transformers storm is expected to continue this weekend, with a pair of new wide releases opening to less-than-scorching receptions. That doesn't portend flops, though, or even disappointments. Let's check the Forecast!

[Click the links below for Movieline's reviews.]

NATIONAL FORECAST

· Cars 2: As Toy Story 3 showed us last year with its $110 million opening weekend, a Pixar franchise is like a license to print money. And as the original, relatively modest-performing Cars showed us back in 2006, an ancillary merchandise bonanza is just as much a reason to establish a franchise as any. So! Cars 2 may be a soulless, cynical puddle of 3-D puke on the glimmering floor of Pixar HQ, but all that matters is that your son buys a Lightning McQueen toy. Which will then commence sodomizing his Chewbacca toy. Wait, where were we? Oh, right. Anyway, animation fatigue, 3-D burnout and general apathy toward the Cars brand won't totally shut this thing down. I like it to overperform, in fact, though not by much. Bring on Transformers 3! FORECAST: $63.6 million

· Bad Teacher: Films like The Box and Knight and Day have ushered in that strange era of every A-lister's career, this time for Cameron Diaz: The era just beyond the knowledge that big openings are no longer sure or nearly sure things. With Justin Timberlake and Jason Segel on her team, however, and the raunchy, R-rated spirit of Bridesmaids and The Hangover Part II lingering over the summer, a sleeper is not entirely out of the question. If only the reviews would cooperate (which looks doubtful, Stephanie Zacharek's rave notwithstanding). I still think it trumps Green Lantern for second place, which is something of a triumph of its own. FORECAST: $24.3 million

THE PRIME DESTINATION

There's not a whole lot remaining for me to tell you about the new documentary If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front or its director Marshall Curry. If you're lucky enough that the film and its intrigues are playing at a theater near you (it expands nationally throughout July), just go see it, seriously.

REGIONAL OUTLOOK

The swell documentary Conan O'Brien Can't Stop lands in about 60 theaters, unveiling the happenings behind the scenes of the exiled late-night host's national comedy tour, while Chris Weitz's sincere immigrant saga A Better Life does art-house battle with Neil Patrick Harris and co. in the parents-being-bad farce The Best and the Brightest. Also landing in 29 theaters in Beginning of the Great Revival, an all-star Chinese export about the fledgling days of the nation's Communist Party.

Care to call your own shots for the weekend?