Toy Story 3 review

After fifteen years, ten films and over $8 billion in global box office receipts, Pixar continues to tear up the movie rule-book with the latest, and presumably final, addition to the Toy Story franchise. In recent years the movie powerhouse has made rats endearing in Ratatouille, wrapped Woody Allen’s Annie Hall up in Sci-Fi kids movie clothing for Wall-E and created the-most-heartbreaking-ten-minutes-of-all-time in Up, but nerves were still on edge at the prospect of returning to the franchise that put Pixar on the map. Lightning had struck twice, but could a third film live up to the heady heights of parts one and two?

Thankfully Toy Story 3 is a triumph, a fitting end for characters that many people including myself have grown up knowing for the past decade and a half. Interestingly it takes a similar approach to another critically lauded threequel, the Bourne Ultimatum, by essentially taking us on a journey that was already set up and predicted in the previous movie. Just as we know that Jason Bourne will eventually end up learning his real identity from the end of Supremacy, so too do we know that a day will come when Andy will grow up and no longer need his toys. The joy of both films is not in the machinations of the plot, but the fun in watching it unravel.

Opening with a bravura sequence that echoes the start of the original Toy Story (but through the imagination of a child) the movie whips by the years between parts two and three via a hand-held montage of owner Andy’s life with his toys, before settling down in a period of uncertainty: Andy is grown up and headed to college, most of his toys already given or thrown away, and Woody, Buzz and co are preparing themselves for a life in the attic. Through developments far too spoilerific to share, the toys are spared their retirement in storage and find themselves donated to the local daycare centre (nursery for us Brits) with a seemingly endless supply of new children to play with them. Things seem pretty swell, yet Woody has trouble letting go of his previous owner...

Working as a kind of double feature with Up, Toy Story 3 is similarly concerned with the process of aging and moving on. Where Carl Fredrickson was grieving over the death of his wife, Woody finds himself dealing with the prospect of no longer being able to do the job that he has loved his whole life. It’s a fitting analogy for retirement, and one that will resonate with older views more than young, yet there are more than enough moments to keep the little ones happy (‘death by monkeys!’) A set-piece involving a mechanical monkey will guarantee nightmares along the lines of Sid’s room from the original, and possibly a lifelong aversion to cymbals.

However it is the winning sense of humour and emotional heart that Pixar films exhibit that once again elevates the film to greatness. Dialogue crackles and sparks, delivered with impeccable timing from the cast of regulars (though sadly without the late Jim Varney as Slinky Dog, who is replaced by friend Blake Clark). A scene with Andy’s now aged dog Buster aches with pathos, juggling suspense, tragedy and comedy when Woody attempts to use him to rescue his friends.

It’s in the closing third that the film truly hits home, delivering the kind of gut-wrenching cinema rarely seen in mainstream cinema. In the midst of tremendous peril, the main characters each have their own moment of clarity with such poignant beauty and economy of storytelling as to possibly surpass anything that Pixar have previously produced. That this moment appears in a fully computer generated film, about a group of plastic toys, makes it all the more remarkable.

Special mention also has to go to the obligatory pre-movie short, this time entitled Day & Night. Containing more creativity in six minutes than Iron Man 2 managed in two hours, it would be worth the price of admission even if it didn’t have the best film of the year so far attached to it.