Toy Story 3 Review

I’m kind of a huge “Toy Story” fan.

The original movie is on my desert island list that I’ve never actually bothered to put together. (It’s mostly because whenever I start thinking about what movies I’d want to have if I were stranded on a desert island, I start to wonder where I’d plug in a TV or DVD player and I get sidetracked the way this paragraph got sidetracked.)

I was a kid when “Toy Story” opened in 1995, so I can’t help but feel like I’ve somewhat grown up along with Andy, the story’s main human character. I’m also a person who once participated in an extended “Toy Story vs. Lion King” debate with my girlfriend. (Nobody else was around, but trust me — I won.)

What I’m trying to tell you is that I had MAJOR expectations for “Toy Story 3.” I was scared too. I was afraid after the phenomenal artistic and financial success of “Toy Story 2” that the people at Pixar had gone back to the well one too many times.

I’m ecstatic to report that “Toy Story 3” exceeded my incredibly high expectations.

Tom Hanks and Tim Allen are back as the voices of Woody and Buzz Lightyear, respectively. Woody and Buzz are still the leaders of Andy’s toys, who haven’t been played with nearly as often as Andy has gotten older and are in danger of being thrown out when Andy heads to college.

The group winds up in a day-care center run by Lotso, a drawlin’, gentlemanly hugging bear who smells like strawberries. Lotso shows Woody and Co. around the day care center and things appear to be too good to be true. (Suffice it to say, they are!)

I don’t want to give too much else away – I was completely delighted throughout the entire thing, and I’d hate to rob someone of that experience.

I will, however, lightly touch on what makes “Toy Story 3” such a terrific movie.

The best thing about the movie is that it’s for everyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re a boy or a girl, a child or an adult, a longtime fan (like me) or someone who doesn’t enjoy animated flicks – there’s something here for you. The genius of the movie (and pretty much every Pixar production) is the way the creative team achieves that sort of mass appeal while still creating fully-realized, impressively-detailed characters.

It’s almost as if every character lives in his/her/its own world (the way, you know, people do) and they just happen to be happily colliding with each other in this story. That means Rex is still endearingly cowardly, Mr. Potato Head is still grouchy, Jesse the Cowgirl is still stung by being abandoned by her previous owners.

Of course, they’re all lead by Woody and Buzz. Hanks and Allen both do excellent, joyful work in returning to their familiar roles. Hanks, especially, shines in conveying Woody’s attachment to (and pending detachment from) Andy and from the rest of his friends. Woody’s selflessness in wanting to remain with his friends and wanting to be there for Andy make him even more heroic here than he was in each previous installment. Even the fact that all these toys want is “to be played with” (and to bring joy to a little kid) is inherently selfless.

That’d be all well and good, but the movie also excels in introducing a host of new characters. Lotso (Ned Beatty) Southern manners make him a disarmingly nasty villain. (He even gets a semi-faux melodramatic back story.) Michael Keaton is an absolute riot as a Ken doll henchman of Lotso’s, who has a complex about being a girls’ toy. (See what I mean about each character having their own issues?) I was also a big fan of the troupe of toys who take their playtime acting very seriously. Finally, I doubt I’ll see a freakier/funnier sight this summer than Big Baby, Lotso’s muscle.

Did I mention that “Toy Story 3” is also the funniest movie I’ve seen all year? Or that it features several downright exhilarating action set pieces? The movie opens with a wonderfully delirious fantasy sequence and its climax features an escape that rivals the plans in “Ocean’s Eleven” and “The Great Escape” in giddy complexity.

Also, the incredibly emotional last 30 minutes of the movie left me feeling like an absolute wreck. (But in a fantastic way.)

I obviously don’t want to get too much into the ending. I’ll just say that the movie’s conclusion is incredibly rewarding for any parent with grown children who wishes they were still little. For any young person about to realize they’ll never really be a kid again. For any person who became incredibly attached to something in their childhood.

That last message is especially poignant in these times, when kids are much more likely to attach themselves to the latest electronic device designed to allow them to act like grownups. The toys in “Toy Story” are as relentlessly old-fashioned as the idea of letting kids use their own imagination during play time.

“Toy Story 3”, in its story and in the execution of that story, reinforces the point that imagination is king.

Toy Story 3…A

Sex and the City 2 Review

“More like Sex and the Shitty!”

That was going to be the opening line to my review of “Sex and the City 2” before I actually saw the thing this past weekend. What?! The reviews were absolutely terrible. And don’t act like you’ve never made your mind up about a movie before you saw it.

After having watched the much-anticipated(?) sequel, I’ll be damned if I actually kind of enjoyed myself. (This review is brought to you by “Low Expectations.”)

Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristen Davis and Cynthia Nixon reprise their iconic roles in the sequel, which curiously takes the foursome out of New York City for most of the movie after Samantha (Cattrall) secures a vacation in Abu Dhabi for her friends. (“More like Sex and the Desert”?) Though I didn’t love the idea of leaving NYC — the city really was a character throughout most of the show — the sequel made enough improvements over the original movie for me to overlook that faux-pas.

My two biggest problems with the first flick were 1.) the four main characters spent way too much time apart (Samantha was in freakin’ L.A.!) and 2.) they forgot to make it funny. The sequel smartly remedies point #1 by whisking the four women away to a foreign country so that they’d have no choice but to hang out together. As for point #2 — I guess it’s up to you (and your tolerance of painful puns like “Lawrence of My Labia” and “Abu Dhabi Doo!”) to decide how funny the movie actually was, but at least they tried! (Seriously — those puns are guaranteed to make you audibly groan and shake your head.)

Unfortunately, the movie is not able to escape all the problems that plagued its predecessor — mainly the fact that there’s no reason for this thing to exist!

The TV series ended with all four of the women finding their happily ever after, so for there to be a movie writer/director Michael Patrick King had to work overtime to manufacture conflict (Big getting cold feet, Steve cheating on Miranda...which I still contend would NEVER happen.)

In the sequel, the main conflict comes from Carrie (Parker) overreacting to some bitchy comment a fan of hers made at a wedding, in regards to her and Big being alone with each other for the rest of their lives. Carrie flips out over the idea that she and Big are going to become a “boring old married couple” and winds up perilously close to being back in the arms of former beau Aiden (John Corbett). Maybe it’s because I’m a guy, but I found it EXTREMELY difficult to be on Carrie’s side in this conflict. I mean, basically she was annoyed that all Big wanted to do was stay at home and spend time with HER, while she wanted to go out clubbing with her friends.

Making your audience think that your protagonist is a moron isn’t usually the way to go.

The problems the rest of the gang face — Samantha vs. menopause, Charlotte struggling with motherhood and a bra-averse hot nanny, Miranda vs. a crappy box — aren’t exactly earth-shattering, but at least they’re a LOT less bratty than Carrie’s issues

Then again, the movie’s biggest problem is that Michael Patrick King really has no business writing or directing a feature film. I touched on the awful puns before, but King’s biggest problem is that he has absolutely no idea how to properly pace a movie, resulting in his second straight feature film that really shouldn't be two and a half hours long. I mean, did we really need to see the ladies walking across the desert in slow motion? Or Charlotte falling off a camel? Or watching the women perform “I Am Woman” in its entirety at a karaoke bar. Any sort of skilled editor could easily chop 45 minutes off this thing.

I was also disappointed to see the men in this flick — besides Chris Noth’s Mr. Big — get the short shrift. I get that it’s all about the ladies, but it’d be nice to get a little reminder as to why these women fell for these guys in the first place. It’s especially a shame because David Eigenberg (Steve) and Evan Handler (Harry) are extremely likable performers. Oh well, at least Raza Jeffrey (as Carrie’s personal butler) acquitted himself quite well.

Since I’ve already established that this movie really has no reason for existing, I would’ve liked to have seen more sequences that were balls-out bananas, like the wedding (or “gay wedding” as Big referred to it) between Stanford and Anthony early in the movie. The sight of Liza Minelli completely throwing herself into “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” was, for better or worse (mostly worse), one of the most mesmerizing visuals you’re going to get in any movie this year. (Or any other year.)

While I still don’t think anyone would confuse this for a good movie, I enjoyed myself because it took a couple of big swings. I also like that the story actually went for laughs this time around and reinforced the strong bond between the four main characters.

Sex and the City 2…C