Toy Story 3 [3D] (****)
Starring (voices): Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Ned Beatty, Don Rickles, Michael Keaton, John Ratzenberger, John Morris, Wallace Shawn, Estelle Harris, Blake Clark
Seen: June 18th 2010
**** Out of ****
Pixar are the absolute giants of the animated movie industry, and they have managed to do it yet again, this time with even more feeling and more honest emotion. The movie starts with one of the best (tongue in cheek) action sequences yet seen in animation, and that includes the fantastic action from The Incredibles. We have the toys split in two groups facing off as good guys and villains in the old west – Woody (Hanks), Buzz (Allen), Jesse (Cusack) and Rex (Shawn) are facing down with Mr. and Mrs Potato Head (Rickles and Harris), the Squeeze Toy Aliens, Hamm (Ratzenberger) and Slinky Dog (Clark). There is train chase, a big explosion, a force field, a space ship and even a nuclear (barrel of monkeys) explosion. It’s absolutely fantastic, and we are shown that this is Andy’s (Morris) fantasy as he plays with his toys before the real story starts.
Andy is about to leave for college, but can’t get so far as to actually throw away his toys, but just as he is about to store them, he is distracted and his mother assumes he was going to throw them away. Believing Andy does not want them anymore, the toys, excluding Woody, perceives the abandonment powerfully enough to get into the box labelled Sunnyside – to be donated to a day-care centre. On arrival they are greeted warmly by the big pink teddy bear Lotso (Beatty), and taken through to their new quarters, which turn out to be the young toddlers playroom, where toys are destroyed soon enough. When Buzz confronts Lotso, his henchmen hold him down and reset Buzz – leaving Astro-Buzz to be used as the crazy jail warden for Andy’s toys. They work up a courageous escape plan, and as Buzz gets reset yet again a surprising incarnation of the Space Ranger emerges.
With awesome throwbacks to The Great Escape and some classic westerns coupled with unbelievably touching emotional moments, Toy Story 3 trumps its predecessors in just about every category. Unlike the Shrek films where the reworking of classic fairy tales started becoming stale and unoriginal (the jokes in Shrek the Third all seemed like the first joke anyone on the staff came up with, regardless of whether they were really good or not), Toy Story 3 delivers in a big way with originality and a tense and involving plot during the escape from the day-care centre as well as an ending that packs an emotional punch that will affect even the harshest critic.
Toy Story 3 deals with eras ending and the way in which we all have to learn to let go of certain things when moving on to a next period in our lives. The beauty of the Toys’ acceptance of their fate in the final sequences at the garbage dump as well as Andy’s acceptance of and dealing with the situation in the sequence right near the end of the movie before he leaves just ripped me apart in their simplicity. One should always look at a reason for existence/ownership in both the toys/belongings you own and in the things you do – and the guys from Pixar not only teaches the usual animated movie lesson regarding friendship, they also encourage discussion and thinking on more than just owning or holding on to things; they take a look at the why behind it all. Toy Story 3 is absolutely fantastic – an improvement on the previous two movies in the series, and in my opinion Pixar’s best to date.
And as a post-script: the short-film before Toy Story, Day & Night, is probably also my all-time favourite short, Pixar or other, and it’s really done brilliantly – silhouetted men representing day and night each showing the other the perks of their own time of the day, and coming to terms with it, sharing each other’s best with the other. Pixar rules supreme…
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