Detail of a cover illustration from Boys' Life magazine, May 1949
I thought it would be funny to jump on the "troll" bandwagon and turn in a negative review of Toy Story 3, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. The only high-profile "dis" the movie has received has been from Armond White, whose review begins (no joke!) with the line, "Pixar has now made three movies explicitly about toys, yet the best movie depiction of how toys express human experience remains Whit Stillman’s 1990 Metropolitan." Whaaa?!?
I loved Toy Story 3 wholeheartedly when I saw it this weekend, and I can only think of one way to meaningfully qualify my praise for it. It may not be the perfect movie for children, but it is definitely the perfect movie for adults who love kids' movies. As I am no longer a small child, it's hard for me to speak on behalf of the little guys, but I think that Toy Story 3 is quite a bit more intense and mature than other high-profile animated feature for kids. It has very frightening moments (the big baby and the surveillance monkey are the most terrifying villains I've seen lately). It has moments that will honestly make you doubt whether the protagonists are going to survive to the final scene - the threat of "death" for these toys becomes very real in the climactic moment. It also deals with themes like making the transition from childhood to adulthood with a bracing realism that outdoes anything in the previous Toy Story movies. I don't know how kids are supposed to feel about this stuff, but I, for one, am now more than a little disappointed in myself for having grown up. Toy Story 3 only gets away with packing a movie for children with so much weighty material by dint of a note-perfect script.
There were so many places where Toy Story 3 could have been disappointing - from the half-hour mark, I was bracing myself for a crappy ending. But screenwriter Michael Arndt (with help from Andrew Stanton, John Lasseter, et al) handles each of the movie's plot twists and emotional moments with amazing deftness. Arguably, humor takes a back seat in long stretches of the movie, but one-off gags are not needed in a movie like this, and the jokes that are there are delivered expertly. I'll admit that I worried about "Spanish Buzz" and the Ken doll's metrosexuality jokes, but none of the stereotyping came off as too heavy-handed and bits like the Mr. Tortilla Head scene got a lot of laughs. The plot may be an extended homage to The Great Escape by way of The Simpsons' Ayn Rand School for Tots, but it easily brushes off such comparisons with impressive pacing and tight plotting that could teach a lesson or two to most of the recent action blockbusters.
The Toy Story trilogy is kind of like the Harry Potter series - by necessity, the movies have matured as the fans have. No one would have been satisfied with a third film that was operating on the level of the original Toy Story story. This may mean that some kids will watch the first two installments of the series over and over for a couple years before they are ready for the intense experience of the trilogy's finale, but, until then, the rest of us can break out the Toy Story 3 DVD after the kids have gone to bed and enjoy one of 2010's best films.
"Toys" by XTC
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