A Prophet Plays With “Toy Story 3″
| Movie Title: | Toy Story 3 |
| Studio: | Disney/Pixar |
| Director: | Lee Unkrich |
| Genre(s): | Family |
| Release Date: | June 18th, 2010 |
| Rating: | G |
Any kid who grew up in the 90s is immediatley familiar with Pixar’s new Toy Story film. The iconic characters, easy-to-relate-to story, as well as the (at the time) groundbreaking technology used to tell the story, make it a staple of childhood cinema.
Admittedly, I really didn’t have very high expectations for this movie, since there’s only so much you can do with a story about toys coming to life (the number of Child’s Play clones on the market will attest to this), and slapping a number onto the end of a movie title almost always causes expectations to plummet. However, I was pleasantly surprised at how well the movie turned out, regardless of it being a sequel or even a family movie.
Toy Story 3 begins with almost all of the characters introduced in the first two movies (a few have apparently been sold by Andy to other owners…whether this is meant to be a plot device or just lazy writing to cover for lost voice-actors, I don’t know), who are coming to grips with the fact that their owner, Andy, is getting ready to go off to college.
Andy plans to just put all of his toys in the attic (sorry to disappoint anyone expecting this to be computer animated version of Animal House), but after a box mix-up, Andy’s toys end up on the sidewalk on trash day. After narrowly escaping being sent to the dump, Andy’s mom decides the best thing to do is to donate the toys to a nearby day-care center. The toys all agree that their new home looks great, but things go awry as they soon discover not everything at the day-care center is quite as it seems to be on the surface.
One of the best things I can say about this movie is that it never really gets bogged down by any slow scenes (at least, not until the last 10 minutes of the movie). Right from the beginning, the toys get themselves into one entertaining scenario after another. While there are a few character exposition scenes, they never overstay their welcome, and Pixar fleshes out the characters well regardless. The voice acting is all very solid, as should be expected based on the previous two movies, and of course the animation is top-notch. Even the humor works on several levels, as there are just as many jokes thrown in for adults as for the children in the audience.
Possibly the greatest aspect of Toy Story 3 is that, like the previous two movies, it relates with its audience resoundingly well, and on many different levels. Any kid can watch the movie and identify with it, but even more-so, the generation of kids who saw the original Toy Story in theaters are able to identify with act 3 in the same direct way that they did 15 years ago. This is because that same generation of kids is going to college as Andy is going off to college. You could call it our generation’s trilogy. This was a really great move on Pixar’s part, as it works to still attract their first audience members right back into the movie theaters.
On a final note, I saw the movie in 3D, and I must say that if you’re going to see Toy Story 3 expecting to get wowed by the 3D aspect, you’re probably going to be underwhelmed. From what I could tell, nothing was really done to show off the 3D technology, other than adding a little bit more depth to the picture quality. The usual 3D tricks that one would expect are not present (i.e. nothing ever “flies” into your face). My tip would be to save your money and just go see the regular version. Either way, I doubt anyone would be truly disappointed with Toy Story 3 as an addition to Pixar’s cinematic canon, and there is plenty to enjoy here for all ages. Chalk up win #11 for the studio, they’re still undefeated.
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