Finally, a sequel that lives up to its predecessors and delivers on previously-established, well-loved traits: “Toy Story 3” celebrates childhood, imagination and the ability to laugh at ourselves.
Much like Pixar’s recent more-than-blockbuster successes, such as “Wall-E” and “Up”, “Toy Story 3” is easily summed up as more than just a well-executed cartoon. It impresses digitally, to be sure, but also impresses with its hefty-but-still-light-at-heart script that yields profoundly-simple-while-meaningful dialogue and metaphoric content. It wouldn’t be a surprise if, like Pixar’s “Up,” it won best animated feature at next year’s Academy Awards.
The movie is charming and innocent, yet fast-paced and entertaining enough for summer-movie standards.
Opening up with lightning speed, we get nothing but action with all of the film series’ fêted stars, er, toys: Sheriff Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), the Potato Heads (Don Rickles and Estelle Harris), Hamm (John Ratzenberger), Jessie (Joan Cusack) and Rex (Wallace Shawn), to name a few, who are everything we need them to be — good at being themselves.
Thrown into the mix are extra, over-the-top-but-very-entertaining special effects salient of the Pixar brand, along with a few new A-list toys, including Barbie (Jodi Benson) and Ken (Michael Keaton).
But what’s poetic about the extra, extra-special effects is that they’re all in Andy’s imagination while he’s playing with his adored toys.
Yes, how sweet.
Well-hyped and preceded by such successful numbers one and two, this go-round had the potential to disappoint. But “Toy Story 3” lives up to this pressure, adding the promise of being entertaining to those eager to watch it again and again, merely icing on the cake for this animated treasure, which has already grossed an estimated $153.8 million domestically over the past weekend. It turns out waiting a decade to release a sequel makes the audience who waxes nostalgic about a brand such as “Toy Story” hit up the theaters in droves.
But it’s not undeserved.
Clever, poignant and just plain adorable, even the scale of these toys’ little lives is precious with the triumphs they accomplish therein, capable of so much. And yet their entire purpose in life is idyllically simple: to be the best-loved conduits of a child’s imagination.
Of course life’s purpose is a little harder to realize not only when you’re a toy, but when life’s plan goes astray. And that’s exactly what happens for the whole lot of them.
When the toys accidentally end up at Sunnyside daycare, everything they knew about their meaning in life changes. However, the daycare, which brilliantly parallels an old-folks’ home, as it’s where toys retire to be the tools of entertainment for children while Andy is in college, is where the toys get to potentially learn more about themselves, and so does the audience.
Of course, there are twists and turns as the audience goes through the learning process simultaneously with the toy cast to discover just what ending up at Sunnyside really means.
Profound, (yes, G-rated movies can often be so) one can argue, the toys are faced with the same realizations about life and mortality that humans are, vulnerable to being tomorrow’s trash just like we humans could perish at any moment.
Director Lee Unkrich and screenwriter Michaeal Arndt present this to us in a way that isn’t all gloom and doom, however, as the toys discover a way to live with this truth: Together, with just the right amount of love, vulnerability and fearlessness any carpe-diem-abiding toy, or human, should bear.
And that’s what makes the movie so darn good. It’s happy, but not too happy. It’s witty, but endearing and self-realizing. Let’s just hope there’s a “Toy Story 4” that can live up to this.
