Firstly, there is a format perk that supersedes the resolution of the projection or another self-deprecating trip to the movies with fashionable 3D eye-wear in Pixar’s latest annual; but it is only awarded to those born in the precious 1988 – 1992 window of childhood. So much so that a reflexive nostalgia (or the opposite?) sucker-punches you from the film’s opening Bond-esque preface. Being 6 when Andy (John Morris) was 6, live in 1995, compliments the series’ bookending of the original target demographic’s maturity – Something I am the sure the film’s designers understood implicitly when being given the greenlight after a complicated development.
So Buzz (Tim Allen) is not being recalled or seen in flash animation or sent straight to DVD (the manifestations of the Toy Story 3 that could have been, loomed like a pop culture Cuban missile crisis for years). Instead we are given the narrative next step after implications made by the understandable Stinky Pete (Kelsey Grammer) in Toy Story 2; 3’s villain Lotso (Ned Beatty) is a more extreme version of Grammer’s memorable menace, pathologically resentful and harboring a hell of a victim complex… Which yields an attempted explanation, but with far less of the haunting grace in Jessie’s (Joan Cusack) “Everything Was Beautiful” abandonment in Toy Story 2 and more akin to the birth of a pulpy supervillian. Despite this subpar troublemaker, the conflicts that mire Andy’s toys are the most extreme in the series, and clearly the most emotionally resonating. Woody (Tom Hanks) brazenly offers a “cross that bridge” sentiment in answer to Pete’s realistic threats of the toy’s eventual abandonment by their beloved Andy – Well that time has come, and whether to pick up the pieces, move on, and be on call for eternity in the attic is a reality that is strikingly played with by writer Michael Arndt. And so, through a labyrinthine exposition I can scarcely remember, the gang ends up in Daycare, suddenly not missing Andy as much in light of forever being played with by imaginative youngsters. Enter Lotso and his cronies, an underplayed toy apartheid scheme (that somehow makes more sense than District 9) and the compelling darkness that closes in on the toys and their ever-shrinking possibilities of a happy future. It is this latter element of the tale that really really works when it really really shouldn’t, and I cannot give enough praise to the creative team that approached the film’s scale of classy emotional storytelling and culture-savvy humour (evident most dramatically in the film’s closing reels).
Big belly laughs are in store, devoid of the cynical smirks and audacious guffaws I released during this year’s wonderful Kick Ass and Iron Man 2. These are honest laughs, safe ones but not one dimensional (oh Lord). The film begins with a more expressionistic account of the ECU genius at play in the first film’s opening seconds. The original tale, first narrated by Andy, is interpreted dynamically (with tongue in cheek of course) with joyously hammy piggy-bank starships and Jurassic Park Rex’s. Before it gets too cool for the room, we are brought back down to Earth for some touching home movies, their VHS age all too effectively harkening back to 1995. At this moment, for those in the aforementioned age range, the throat gets lumpy and we order our own adolescence playing its own credits overtop this movie. Often, too much is going on (Woody paragliding?) to give it the streamlined masterfulness of the original and best Toy Story, but the Daycare setting is designed as an memorable jungle gym for the toys to plot pint sized adventures. Also strong is the ne’er skip a beat attitude of the 11 year gap between the most recent sequels – the narrative moves along as if there were no wait at all, years inside and outside the film an intermission for the greater and cohesive plaything epic. The new additions to the roster are surprisingly vivid (Teddy Newton’s Chatter Telephone was a favourite), and Michael Keaton’s Ken is lulzy enough to justify the been-there implications of him being, yes, a girl’s doll. Director Lee Unkrich (no newcomer to the toys) and his Pixar team understand that Toy Story 3 is an animated film; recent total-CGI output, which is of an eccentric magnitude the last few years, has used the lighting and framing of a live action film to assert their status as worthy of grown-up recognition. Toy Story 3 kicks the tripod from out under the camera and finds that it can float. The frame zips nimbly, effortlessly, creating shots and movements that are either impossible for your 35mm camera or cheesily reproduced in the live-action world. This approach really defines Pixar, embraces instead of resents its animation possibilities, and allows for an experience distinct from anything else you’ve seen. 3D cinema is at its least gimmicky in this film, deciding to emphasize moods of depth like one would choose a lens over throwing polygonal artifacts out of the screen. Pixar justifies a use for 3D cinema, using it as a non representational tool to build spaces in a charmingly artificial world.
The most exciting and charming aspect of Toy Story as a series, is the little folks in a huuuge world dynamic. There is something brilliant about hellbent toys striving to reach the highest shelf, but able to easily explore a vending machine’s innards. This third film follows through most impressively, as even a bathroom is an obstacle course of choreographed whimsy. But, as I am sure you will encounter in many other reviews, it is the film’s evocative and thumping heart that is presented with the steadiest hand on behalf of Pixar. Last year’s UP, an outing that I frankly did not care for, relied on instinctual sap whereas Toy Story 3 goes Mount Doom in a trash furnace that in all respects should be ridiculous… But is so far from it, with all the prefaced impending doom and coming irrelevance of their existence, that this scene is so expertly made and felt. The final “passing of the torch” moments recall the safe approach of UP, but it is really the close up introduction of Andy’s toys being taken out of the box preceding it, mirroring their beginning moments in Toy Story, that wets the cheeks and vitalizes your since forgotten youth… It is a climactic scene of which will be the most memorable of this year I am sure. Toy Story 3 is at times procedural and overfed, and the overwhelming feelings of growin’ up are more endemic of an internal response and not a product of the film itself… But for the scenes that should matter, they do, they do, and they do. Enjoyable for all despite my original (and pompous) statement that it is really for the folks in my age group, I have a personal stake in how this series should end and reciprocate my childhood loyalty, and it unmistakably has – goodbye and thank you, Pixar and co.
(8.0/10)
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