Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich, 2010)

In the months before the eagerly awaited Toy Story 3, a Facebook group was created under the title of “Move out of the way children, I’ve been waiting 11 years to see Toy Story 3”. It’s a glimmering example of how certain movies can split their appeal between generations. Not only have audiences changed since John Lasseter’s 1995 classic Toy Story, but the way we watch movies has changed. Since TS, we have seen the decline of VHS, the introduction of DVD shattering ground in how we think of movies, and Blu-Ray providing us with a glimpse of the future.

Following 1999’s Toy Story 2, Pixar’s latest work picks up with Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and co going through a transitional phase themselves. Their once doting owner Andy Davis, voiced for the third time by John Morris, now 25, is about to leave for college and has a crushing dilemma to solve. Which of his toys will he take to college for sentimental reasons? How many will he leave in the attic? Woody is kept, which causes dissention in the ranks, whilst Mr Potato Head (Don Rickles), Jessie (Joan Cusack) and friends are mistakenly donated to Sunnyside Daycare.

In director Lee Unkrich’s threequel, it’s now a race against time as Woody must save his friends. Of course, Sunnyside is not a hospitable place for the gang. They soon run into Lots-O’-Huggin’ Bear (Ned Beatty) who appears welcoming on the outside, but wants to do anything but hug the protagonists. The purple bear and his posse of seasoned veterans in Sunnyside dislike Andy’s toys’ attitude towards the centre. Lots-O’ and his ensemble plan to make their life a living hell.

One of the funniest characters in the bear’s entourage is a replica of Barbie’s (Jodie Benson) boyfriend, Ken (Michael Keaton). He is handsome, fashionable, and a wise cracker. Ken is portrayed as the Gok Wan of TS3, and dances for Barbie in numerous extravagant outfits, leaving audiences in stitches with his camp comedy. The CGI on Ken is very clever. Like the real Barbie and Ken dolls, their arms do not bend, they only move back and forth, giving them an authentic, rigid, plastic appearance.

TS3 is of course a very socially aware text by using Ken and Barbie. Another technique showing this is a side-splitting sequence in which triceratops Trixie (Kristen Schaal) is embarrassed to be seen flirting with a Velociraptor on an Internet chat website. Screenplay scribe Michael Arndt never uncovers who she is talking to, but ironically enough, we later see her with loveable, dopey dinosaur Rex (Wallace Shawn).

Rex is the type of character that makes a series successful. The garden green Tyrannousaurus rex had his legacy rubber-stamped with an ingenious cameo in Pixar's Monsters Inc., and is comically self-deprecating, melodramatic, and particularly enjoyable in the chaos when the toys hide from the boisterous children in Sunnyside. Another familiar stand-out performer is Mr Potato Head, whose highlight comes as he loses his potato body and ends up with this face and limbs protruding unsafely from a pitta bread wrap.

Viewers in their thirties and preteens alike will have their hearts toyed with as Unkrich poses endless questions of “how will they get away from this one?” We have grown to know and love the characters over the last decade and a half, and wince at the thought of them being in danger. The US and Canada’s highest grossing film of 2010 thrives in breathless action and adventure from start to finish, with a few rowdy belly laughs nestled in between.

Losing the TS franchise is like the movie fan losing their favourite toy, and the film’s emotive ending leaves feelings of both happiness and sadness lodged in the stomach. 42-year-old Unkrich admitted that he had not thought about anything else but TS3 in four years. It is clear many fans will have similar confessions, and that the franchise’s influential legacy will live on through generations.

Verdict: Opening with a blistering action sequence to throw us in at the deep end, there’s romance between Ken and Barbie, a rib achingly funny Spanish Buzz and the stock boo-boy in Lots-O’-Huggin’ Bear. There is a saddening sense of finality here, and it’s like losing one of the family. But this is a rip-roaring success for the unflinchingly consistent bar-raisers in Pixar.

5/5

By Alistair Hendrie