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