84) Toy Story 3

Toy Story 3 (2010)

Director: Lee Unkrich

Starring: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Ned Beatty, Don Rickles, Michael Keaton, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Estelle Harris, Blake Clark, Jodi Benson, John Morris

I'm just about to head on holidays for a week and a bit so the movie viewing may slow for a little while but one film I wanted to make sure I got in before I headed off was Toy Story 3. If I'd thought about it I should have gone last week in a daytime screening while school was still running, I'm not a big fan of kiddies in the movies. Too loud. But I suppose they aren't as annoying as teenagers. They should know better. Anyway, as it turned out the only time we could go was in the afternoon on the first weekend of the school holidays.

Years have passed and Andy (Morris) is now getting ready to go to college. He is told to clear out his room, deciding what to take to college, what to store in the attic and what to throw out. Despite not having played with them for years, Andy still feels attached to his toys and can't bear to throw them out. He decides to take Woody (Hanks) with him to college and store the rest in the attic, but a mix-up sees them almost thrown out and then donated to Sunnyside Daycare, including Woody who was trying to rescue them. Buzz (Allen), Jessie (Cusack) and the gang feel betrayed and abandoned by Andy, leaving Woody, who knows the truth, to escape on his own. Initially Sunnyside seems like paradise but they soon discover the toys are ruled over by the iron fist, or rather the purple, fluffy fist, of Lots-o-Huggin' Bear (Beatty). When Woody finds out about the true nature of Sunnyside he has to sneak back in to try and rescue his friends.

I was a bit wary coming into Toy Story 3. I guess I felt that Pixar had moved on in the last decade and were doing really original unique work, and was concerned that a return to Toy Story would be almost like a step backwards for the studio. Having seen it, my concerns have not been resolved. Obviously there was something nice about seeing all those old characters back again, there was a certain joy which came from the familiarity of it. But there was nothing new about the film. It was very much more of the same. It lacked the originality and unique creativity that we have come to expect from Pixar, attributes which were both very much on display in the wonderful short film, Day and Night, which precedes the feature. For me, Toy Story 3 did not inspire wonder the same way that Wall-E and Up did.

That is not to say though that it was a bad film. Far from it. The Toy Story franchise has set a very high standard, so the fact that the filmmakers were able to produce more of the same rather than slipping slightly is a credit to them. Maintaining consistent excellence throughout a trilogy is something which appears very difficult to do. Even Coppola's Godfather trilogy was let down by its third installment. Likewise in the Pirates of the Caribbean, X-Men, Spiderman, Back to the Future and even Star Wars trilogies you'll find one film which doesn't quite reach the heights of the others. The Toy Story trilogy, though, has been amazingly consistent. There may be no notable improvement from film to film, but there is equally no decline.

For a kids film about toys this film packs an emotional punch. Of course there is still a sense of fun and lots of laughs, but the film is also at times frightening, traumatic and terribly sad. Lotso rules over the toys in the day care centre like an underworld king pin, which while being a fantastic narrative device does mark for some dark moments. There is also one particularly traumatic scene in which the toys find themselves in a furnace at a garbage collection centre. As they edge closer to the fire they stop struggling and simply hold hands with each other and accept their fate. They get rescued (I can say that without ruining the movie because no one would really think that they would finish this beloved children's series by burning all the toys alive) but it is still a pretty full on moment. But most of all the film is a bit sad. It's a film about growing up, moving on and saying goodbye and that tugs at the heartstrings a bit. In particular the scene towards the end in which Andy says goodbye to each of his toys appears to have specially engineered to induce tears.

While all of the main characters seem to look the exactly the same, there has been a dramatic improvement in the quality of the animation. You only really appreciate how far Pixar has come when you go back and watch the original Toy Story. You'll be amazed by how, for want of a better word, dodgy elements of the film look when you consider it blew everyone away when it came out. It was, after all, made in 1995. The most notable improvement in the animation is in the human characters. In the original Toy Story the toys looked great, because there is an element of lifelessness in them that we expect, anything that was actually supposed to be alive; humans, dogs, looked very unconvincing. However, in Toy Story 3 the human characters, who play a much lesser role than in the first two films, look fantastic. In particular the toddler Bonnie is adorable.

Again, I saw the film in 3D and was underwhelmed. I always feel as though I should see them in 3D because that is the way they were intended and if I go in 2D I might be missing some of the experience, but like numerous times before it did nothing for me and hardly seemed worth the extra admission price (seriously $19.50 for an adult, $16 for a student even when we brought our own glasses!).

Toy Story 3 is getting absolute monster reviews. Everywhere you look it's getting five stars or two thumbs up. The votes of users on IMDb currently have it sitting as the 6th greatest film of all time. Obviously, I don't think it is quite that good and as the hype dies down a bit we'll get a slightly more considered response to the film, but there is a reason people are going mental for it. There is a lot to love about this film. There is a joy in reacquainting ourselves with old friends, and the film does a great job of closing out what has obviously been a very special series of films to a lot of people.