Toy Story 3 cold opens on the top of a moving train. Woody is in a struggle with the Potato Heads back in the old west. It’s the type of scene that calls back to the opening of an Indiana Jones movie. Before things end up settled there’s laser beams, jet packs, pig shaped space ships, and gigantic explosions. The sorts of things that when placed beside each other might seem like they were part of some sort of fever dream, some sort of Gilliam-esque visual collage of insanity. Before you’re able to actually start theorizing that Terry Gilliam might have taken over a Pixar franchise, however, you realize that all of this action is being played out inside the imagination of Andy, the kid from the first two films. The real scene is just a couple of inanimate, plastic objects being thrown around on a bedroom floor. And that’s what the Toy Story franchise has that sets it apart from everything else out there, it’s ability to take you back to your beginnings and let you see things through the eyes of a child. It reminds you of those days in your youth when beds substituted in for mountains, carpet for oceans. GI Joe battled right alongside Thundercats even though one was a four-inch tall human and the other a nine-inch tall space-cat. They knocked down Lincoln Log cabins and used matchbox cars as super powered roller skates. These things can only make sense to little kids. If a little kid tried to explain the stuff going on in his imagination to you right now you would respond with a fatigued “yeah, yeah” pat the kid on the head, and tell them to move along. Toy Story, on the other hand, is able to somehow make you listen to these stories with interest; it makes you care about them. It’s able to take you away from whatever your real world concerns are for two hours and sweep you up into some sort of ludicrous adventure that’s just supposed to be kid’s stuff. And while the formula is starting to wear pretty thin at this point, Toy Story 3 is made with just as much care and skill as the first two films in the series and is well worth your time.
Much like the first two films, Toy Story 3 is a story about being replaced. This time via a sort of aging out that is naturally occurring as Andy goes through his teen years and prepares for college. Early on in the film Andy’s mother gives him a series of bags and boxes and tells him that it’s time to decide what goes in the attic, what goes with him to college, what gets donated, and what goes in the trash. The drama of this moment is not lost on the toys. What would be their fate? Would they be split up? Would they stay together? The attic doesn’t sound so bad, at least they could hang out with the Christmas decorations. Surely they wouldn’t be going to college, would they? Andy hasn’t played with them in years! What would being donated be like? And God forbid… the trash? The situation causes panic, rifts in the group, and calls to action. Through a series of slightly complex events, the toys end up donated to a daycare center. At first all seems well. The other toys at the center, led by a strawberry scented stuffed bear named Lotso (Ned Beatty), seem very accommodating. There are promises of getting played with all the time. As kids get older they will be replaced with new ones eager to get a crack at some toys. Suddenly, worrying about their fate doesn’t seem like it will be a problem any longer. This daycare gig might just be toy heaven. But later on, Lotso and his cronies’ initially inviting attitudes morph into something more sinister, there are hints that Andy didn’t mean to get rid of them after all, and suddenly the movie turns into a mad dash prison escape film complete with all the trimmings and trappings of the genre.
Much like the first two films, Toy Story 3 is a story about being replaced. This time via a sort of aging out that is naturally occurring as Andy goes through his teen years and prepares for college. Early on in the film Andy’s mother gives him a series of bags and boxes and tells him that it’s time to decide what goes in the attic, what goes with him to college, what gets donated, and what goes in the trash. The drama of this moment is not lost on the toys. What would be their fate? Would they be split up? Would they stay together? The attic doesn’t sound so bad, at least they could hang out with the Christmas decorations. Surely they wouldn’t be going to college, would they? Andy hasn’t played with them in years! What would being donated be like? And God forbid… the trash? The situation causes panic, rifts in the group, and calls to action. Through a series of slightly complex events, the toys end up donated to a daycare center. At first all seems well. The other toys at the center, led by a strawberry scented stuffed bear named Lotso (Ned Beatty), seem very accommodating. There are promises of getting played with all the time. As kids get older they will be replaced with new ones eager to get a crack at some toys. Suddenly, worrying about their fate doesn’t seem like it will be a problem any longer. This daycare gig might just be toy heaven. But later on, Lotso and his cronies’ initially inviting attitudes morph into something more sinister, there are hints that Andy didn’t mean to get rid of them after all, and suddenly the movie turns into a mad dash prison escape film complete with all the trimmings and trappings of the genre.
A big part of what keeps people coming back to these films is their attachment to the characters. Despite the untimely passing of Jim Varney causing a change of voice for Slinky Dog, all of the rest of the main voice actors are back. Tom Hanks is still adding a layer of emotional depth and resonance to Woody, probably the main protagonist of these films. Tim Allen is still adding unmatched bluster and bravado to Buzz Lightyear. Wallace Shawn and John Ratzenberger return as reliable comedic relief playing Rex and Hamm, and Don Rickles and Estelle Harris continue to show great chemistry as the oft bickering Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head. These six make up my essential core of characters when it comes to the main cast of a Toy Story film, and they all remain well played, well written, and time spent watching this film ends up feeling like time spent with old friends. The roster depth is added to in this film by some really fun voice work from Michael Keaton and Ned Beatty as the film’s chief villains, Ken and Lotso. Ken is that Ken, the one from Ken and Barbie. He’s played mostly for laughs, but Keaton is able to keep the joke funny with his cocky, self-unaware turn as the vain, metro-sexual fashionista that the film portrays Ken as. Ned Beatty is really something else here. His voice has the smooth, enveloping warmth of a honeyed whiskey. He reminds you of a sort of archetypical, wise old southern grandpa who is able to make you feel safe and secure with just a gesture and a wink. But then he turns sinister on a dime. His character is broken, complex, and tragic. He develops a real dark, Colonel Kurtz-esque cult leader persona over the course of the film. We are shown his descent from decent bear to screen villain, and it’s interesting and effective to watch, but Beatty is always able to make Lotso enough of a bastard that we never root for him to succeed. Walking out of this film, the thing that stuck with me most prominently was what a great, dangerous, evil villain Beatty was able to create. For a children’s film, Lotso’s actions and character arc are kind of an intense ride, and it’s this kind of fearless delving into more adult material that keeps Pixar’s films ranked head and shoulders above their competitors.
The most effective parts of this film are the action sequences. The jailbreak stuff was handled just as well as it could have been in any live action film with human beings as the main characters. The daycare setting was moody and foreboding. The way the filmmakers are able to switch tone here seamlessly from childhood romp, to noir thriller, to action film, and then back again is a real joy. The metaphor of daycare center as prison works well due to both clever conception and excellence in execution. The toy bins become the prison cells. The sandbox stands in for “the hole”. Chuckles, a toy clown tells the story of how the prison came to be in a haunting flashback sequence that felt like something out of a classic film. A Chatter Telephone turns informant in a shadowy scene lifted directly from old detective tales. A big, mindless baby doll acts as the main prison guard in a Frankenstein Monster like role that somehow is able to create a truly dangerous screen presence and gravitas despite being a big plastic F’ing baby doll. The action mixes thrills with humor in such an effective way that it’s almost as if you’re watching Harrison Ford adventure romping back in his prime. The climactic scene that takes place in a giant trash compactor is the gravest, most tension filled predicament I’ve seen in an action film in as long as I can recall. The toy’s actions and reactions here are human, resonant, and the situations they’re put in might just be too intense for a lot of the smaller kids in the audience. This stuff is Pinocchio getting swallowed by the whale, Bambi’s mother getting shot territory. It’s those moments that I remember from the kid’s movies of my childhood that have stuck with me the most. The one’s that were probably a bit too much for their intended audience. The one’s that were a bit too mature, a bit too challenging. It’s those moments that can rock a little kid’s world in a way that no jaded adult’s can be challenged. Sure, they might be a little traumatic to get through at first, but they stay with you, they change you, and they affect the way you develop as an individual. Moments like this are criminally absent from the vast majority of today’s children’s films. We’ve become too PC, too safe, too concerned about cheap laughs and not nearly concerned enough about taking a little kid’s mind, perhaps the best, most open to change audience somebody creating art can find, and completely shaking up their perception of reality.
The Toy Story films do all this. They may be childish adventure stories on the surface, but they are films about relationships and pain at their core. They are about loyalty, friendship, and how they can be strained and shattered during hard times. Toy Story 3 looks like a pretty simple story about a kid growing up and letting go of his childhood on its surface, but if you look a bit deeper it reveals itself to be more interesting, and more resonant than that. The real story here is Woody’s, not Andy’s. All of the expositional dialogue and the thrust of the narrative revolves around what’s going to happen once Andy grows up, but the heart of the film is the more subtle story of watching Woody grow up. The changes that Andy goes through happen mostly off camera, they’re told to us rather than experienced by us. He’s more of a plot point than he is a character. But the changes that happen to Woody are ones we watch develop organically, ones that resonate with us and ingrain themselves in our hearts. Toy Story 3 tells us that it’s a story about a kid letting go of his childhood, and it can be enjoyed on that level alone, but what it’s really about is a parent learning to let go of his child. It’s that sort of clever inversion of perspective that takes Pixar films from being kid’s movies with adult jokes thrown in so the parents in the audience don’t get bored, and elevates them to being adult films that are kept universal enough that the kids in the audience won’t get bored. In any other studio’s presentation of Toy Story Woody would be a wise cracking cartoon sidekick. Here he is a three dimensional protagonist who experiences very adult emotions, wrestles with very resonant conflicts, and changes and develops over the course of a film in very real ways.
Now, before this review turns into too much of a love-fest, there were a couple problems I had with the film. The first act just took too long to get off the ground. There was too much repetition in the dialogue, and it felt like the main conflict of the plot was being hammered home to an excessive point. By about the fourth time that the main characters all got together and angsted about what Andy was going to decide to do with them when he moved to college I was getting antsy and wanted the film to just get on with it. Building tension toward the big decision is one thing, but getting the Toys over to the daycare center took so much time that it felt like false starts and time filler to me. Especially for a film whose plot so closely mirrors the plots of the first two films in the installment without bothering to change up the formula much at all. That sort of pandering over emphasis on what we’re supposed to be paying attention to crept into the film’s dénouement and ruined it a bit for me as well. The true ending, after all the action, the jokes, and the climaxes are over is an emotional moment between Andy and his toys before they part ways. It was too melodramatic for me, too explanatory. The script told me what I should be feeling in a very heavy-handed way, and I couldn’t help but feel like I was being manipulated. Wall-E was able to make me feel more for it’s lonesome hero without using any dialogue at all. Up was able to make the teenage girls behind me at my screening of that film sob for twenty minutes straight during a prologue montage. Toy Story 3 had to beg for its tears. My heartstrings weren’t being expertly plucked like they were with Pixar’s last couple films; instead they got yanked until they broke.
