AT THE MOVIES WITH KASEY BUTCHER
It’s been fifteen years since the original Toy Story came out and eleven years since Toy Story 2. I have a six year-old sister at home, so the Toy Story movies never really stopped being watched at our house and Marissa’s obsession with them ensured that I saw them more times than I really wanted to. After the long stretch of time between Toy Story 2 and the release of Toy Story 3, I was skeptical, but hopeful that the series would not suffer the fate of so many Disney sequels. Hope beat out skepticism and going to see Toy Story 3 was fun for both my sister and the grown-ups in my family.
In Toy Story 3, the toys are faced with a crisis as Andy gets ready to go to college. Mom clearly has plans to turn his room into a craft room or something, because anything Andy doesn’t pack up has to be thrown out or moved to the attic. When the toys end up in the trash, despite Woody’s insistence that they were bound for retirement in the attic, they decide that moving on is their only option and climb into a box of Molly’s toys being donated to a daycare center. Once at Sunnyside Daycare, Woody isn’t convinced that it’s the right place for them, so he takes off, determined to get back to Andy before he leaves for college. Instead, he ends up in a little girl named Bonnie’s room. Meanwhile, the rest of the toys are banished by Lots-O, a dictator of a teddy bear, to the toddler room at Sunnyside and quickly find that it isn’t the safe home they hoped it would be. The rest is an adventure of escape, friendship, loyalty, and finding home. Toy Story 3, unlike the rest of the series, is as much Andy’s story as it is the toys’. While the story is engaging for kids, watching Andy negotiate that uncomfortable moment in which he begins to leave childhood with uncertain steps pulls on grown-up hearts too.
For me, part of the fun of the Toy Story movies is seeing all the old-school toys they work into the storyline, many of which resemble toys I grew up playing with. Toy Story 3 does an especially cute job with Barbie and Ken. This movie, however, also seems to be drawing inspiration from other movies. About three-quarters of the way through the movie, a certain scene at the dump triggered my memory. I realized that I had seen basically the same sequence in a childhood favorite of mine, The Brave Little Toaster (1987). On further reflection, I realized that the nutshell plot of Toy Story 3 is essentially the same as The Brave Little Toaster. Little sister agreed. Toy Story 3, however, actually improves upon the plot and is far less creepy than The Brave Little Toaster was. I was delighted by the connection, not frustrated by a possible recycling of story-lines. Another section of the movie seemed to be paying homage to The Great Escape (1963) and the similar visuals and action in the sequence were really cool.
Toy Story 3 can be a little intense at times. When my sister was younger, she was discouraged from watching Toy Story in favor of Toy Story 2, because Sid gave my mom the heebie-jeebies. Parts of Toy Story 3 are scarier than Sid ever was. Still, they’re also more enjoyable than Sid was too.
One of the great parts of this movie is having the original voice actors reprise their roles. The voice work of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Don Rickles, et al. is such a big part of the characters themselves. Even John Morris, who voiced Andy in the first movies, reprises his role as 17 year-old Andy. Having the actors back to voice their roles was like having old friends back too.
Toy Story 3 was both gripping and adorable. Like Pixar movies tend to be, it was also a bit of a tearjerker. For the quality of the storytelling, successfully connecting to the first two movies and breaking off in a new direction, as well as Pixar’s high-quality animation, and talented voice acting, I rate Toy Story 3 4.5/5 stars
The Pixar short before the movie, Day & Night is one of my favorite shorts I’ve seen before a Pixar movie. The visuals are gorgeous and the story is interesting and sweet.
Toy Story 3 was written by Michael Arndt, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich, who also directed. It runs 103 minutes and is rated G. Screenings are available in both 3D and 2D.
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