Toy Story 3

TOY STORY 3
DISNEY PIXAR
RELEASED 17 July 2010
Of the ten movies Pixar have released since 1996, I still rate the ‘Toy Story’ movies as their best work. That’s not to denigrate what’s come since, as recent fare like ‘Wall•E and ‘Up’ contain sequences of pure perfection. But Pixar haven’t yet come up with such a simple and elastic story idea as that of toys coming alive when the owner isn’t looking. It’s a brave move to try and recapture that ‘Toy Story’ magic again after ten years, but Pixar have only gone and done it! Now they have that almost unheard-of movie commodity – the perfect trilogy.
Andy is packing up his room as he prepares to leave home for college. As the posters come down, Andy puts all his toys into a black bin liner meant for the attic, pausing only for Woody (Tom Hanks) and Buzz (Tim Allen). Buzz is reluctantly placed with the other toys, while Woody gets to go in the exclusive ‘College’ cardboard box. However, the bin bag is mistakenly picked up by Andy’s mum and put out with the trash. As Woody tries to stop the gang getting put in the garbage truck, they all end up in the back of mum’s car, hiding in a box marked ‘Sunnyside’. Sunnyside is the local daycare centre, and the toys are soon at the mercy of either a screaming pack of tiny tots only too eager to pound them or slobber over them, or the long-standing toys already at the daycare centre, led by Lotso (Ned Beatty), a pink, strawberry-smelling bear, and his henchman Ken (Michael Keaton), who gets on famously with the gangs’ very own Barbie (Jodi Benson). Surrounded by a green wall five times higher than the kids, there appears to be no way the toys can escape Sunnyside and get back to Andy’s house. And even if they did, does a life in the attic really seem worth it? Woody must deal with his own dilema of staying with his friends or attempting to get back in Andy’s collge box, together with Andy again but with no toys for company.
There’s an awful lot more story in ‘Toy Story 3’ than I’ve given away here, but it would be cruel to spoil the fun. Simply trust me when I say this will probably be the funniest, sharpest, and saddest film of the year. That’s not just counting kids films, but every film released this year! Pixar have once again delivered a story and script that are faultless. There are times when the toys seem more human than most characters in most other movies. It’s incredible that the computer wiz-kids can make you emphasise so strongly with Potato Head, Slinky, Rex, Jessie and the rest that when the gang hold hands as they await a dreadful fate near the end, you’re gulping down the emotions, praying that Pixar haven’t gone crazy and are about to unleash the most upsetting cinema moment a child will ever witness. Fortunately they don’t, but things get extremely intense for a while, and I think young kids might get quite upset. Adults definitely will!
Performance-wise, Tom Hanks and Tim Allen are at their very best again, but there are many other newcomers giving them a run for their money, such as Michael Keaton as the fashion-crazy Ken doll, Ned Beatty as the embittered Lotso, and Timothy Dalton as the classically-trained Mr Pricklepants.
Every Pixar movie seems to look better than the last, but this is the first one I can remember where, although undeniably at the peak of movie animation, it’s not the quality of the visuals that you go away thinking about. Credit must go to the powerful story, but I also think computer animation has reached a plateau, where the visuals won’t get so much attention any more.
I have to finish by saying that, although hugely entertaining and satisfying, I do think the second ‘Toy Story’ movie just edges the other two out as the best of the bunch, mainly because this third entry doesn’t quite feature anything as heart-wrenching as Jessie’s song ‘When She Loved Me’ (written by Randy Newman), which would make the coldest heart melt.
FIVE OUT OF FIVE