Toy Story 3

At the middle of “Toy Story 2,” Jessie tells the story of Emily, her former owner, in a montage set to Sarah McLachlan singing When She Loved Me (a song written by Randy Newman, like all the songs in the “Toy Story” series). Jessie was Emily’s favorite toy and wanted to be a cowgirl until she hit her teenage years. Slowly, the cowgirl memorabilia was replaced with makeup on Emily’s dresser, and Jessie was underneath Emily’s bed collecting dust until Emily put her in a box and dropped her off at a donation truck.

Dana Stevens stated in her review, “Moments before the screening of Toy Story 3 (Disney/Pixar) began, my viewing companion and I were remembering the waterworks that inevitably accompany that montage. (I just watched it online before embedding the link above and, yep, cried again.) Stories about the waning of childhood fantasy, the process by which our earliest playthings are divested of their once-magical aura, touch on an experience of loss that's familiar to everyone but that's seldom depicted in art. "That kind of story gets to me more than any other," confessed my friend as the lights went down and we donned our 3-D glasses.”

Stevens went on to say, “He had no idea what he was in for or how grateful we would both be for the glasses to hide behind. Like the marriage montage near the beginning of Up, the last 10 minutes of Toy Story 3 seem to have been developed in collaboration with an ophthalmologist specializing in the production of tears.” Maybe Pixar has one on their crew? The sad message of Jessie’s song, which takes up only a few minutes of screen time in the then animated adventure of “Toy Story 2,” is what takes up the entirety of “Toy Story 3,” released in 2010. This had to have been the most emotionally difficult film targeted towards children. (However, if you look at it, the original children audience of “Toy Story” are now adults, the film has been made for adults as well.)

In “Toy Story 3,” our favorite group of toys are now facing the inevitable part of life, the fear of abandonment, the loss of love. Stevens stated, “These are some existentially engaged friggin' toys. And yet the overwhelming mood of the movie is one of ebullience, generosity, and joy. That weepy ending, combined with the laugh-per-second energy of the hour and a half that preceded it, sends the viewer out of the movie in a state of cathartic uplift, as if she'd been Rolfed. (But don't float out before the final credits—they're packed with high-quality Pixar Easter eggs.)”

For those who haven’t seen, or don’t remember, the first two films (the third was released, surprisingly, 15 years after the first one was), the toys that have been owned by Andy, the child who must have been somewhere in the middle of his Elementary School years when the franchise started. He’s now 17, voiced by John Morris, and packing his bags to leave for college. (The director, Lee Unkrich, gets the audience caught up with what happened with Andy in a nicely done home-video montage). After some thought on whether he’ll donate his toys or keep them in the attic, Andy sentimentally chooses the later – but his mother, thinking the unmarked bag of toys is garbage, takes it out to the trash can. Now, Woody, the one toy Andy put aside to take to college, goes outside to save his friends.

The events that unfold afterwards are a complicatedly planned chase that eventually ends up at a day care center called Sunnyside – a place that’s not what it looks like on the façade. Woody, Jessie, Buzz and the rest are welcomed by the superficially gentle Lots-o’-Huggin Bear, voiced by Ned Beatty, which is another character that will refer to in a scary whisper as “that evil bear who smells like strawberries.” Lotso lets the toys know that at Sunnyside, they’ll once again find children to play with them. Instead, Andy’s former toys are thrown around like rag dolls by a roomful of toddlers that must be on a sugar high and, when they try to escape, are held prisoner by Lotso, his silently terrifying sidekick Big Baby, and a clothes-obsessed Ken doll, voiced by Michael Keaton, whose ethics aren’t the only uncertain thing about him.

The people at Pixar who created this must be a very active and rough, because if there’s a toy-related gag made up by the human mind, it’s somewhere in the movie. Every single screen time is filled with unusual toys appearing out of boxes and dashing around shelves: There’s a Fisher Price telephone on wheels talking to others by ringing his speaker, voiced by Teddy Newton. A robot toy who bounces between two expressions – happy and mad – by banging his own head, voiced by Jan Rabson. A lederhosen-wearing hedgehog, voiced by Timothy Dalton, who likes to think of himself as a gifted actor. Stevens added, “And a brilliant long-form gag that raises the ontological question: In what feature of a Mr. Potato Head does the spud's spiritual essence reside?” Somehow, the plethora of characters, jokes and action scenes never feels disjointing or too much. Through everything, the toys’ plan is straightforward and clear: They must get back home to Andy who, even though he’s an adult, still loves them. Stevens went on to say, “As for that last sequence after they do—hold up. I need a moment.”

Go ahead and ask: Is there anything wrong with “Toy Story 3?” Stevens said, “Well, the addition of 3-D to the franchise's universe does seem like a move motivated more by marketing than artistic necessity (which was also the case, I thought, with Up). The depth effect looks crisp enough, but with a couple of somewhat gimmicky exceptions, it rarely gets used. (That weakness is more than overcome in Day & Night, a wordless short that precedes the movie and is the most inventive use of animated 3-D I've ever seen.) And I guess—racking my brains here—that a few of the newly introduced characters are a little underwritten. (Though Ken is a marvel—one of the most complex characters, animated or otherwise, to appear on screens this year.)”

In the end, nitpicking a movie this richly filled with amazements feels like a move of thanklessness. “Toy Story 3” is an almost perfect film in Pixar’s company, a children’s franchise that will be watched and liked when I have children when they have toys that are boxed away in our basement.

This is another one of my favorites in the Pixar series. If you loved the first two a lot, go ahead and see this one, this is the best amongst the entire trilogy. Each film got better and better, and this one is no exception. See it if you haven’t because I cannot do the film justice with this review. 

Surprisingly, they are actually planning on releasing a "Toy Story 4" in about 2-3 years. I don't understand why they are planning that when it seems like a huge cash grab, but if it shocks us again like this one did, then let's just wait and find out.

Look out tomorrow when I look at another sequel in “Disney’s Pixar Month.”