Toy Story 3 (Sunday, June 20, 2010) (56)

I am a fan of the Toy Story movies. I liked the first one and loved the second one. For me they are fantastic buddy movies that smartly pull from film history to make wonderful, contemporary stories. There is a ton of John Wayne and Dean Martin from Rio Bravo in them (they are basically Westerns) and I love that.

Toy Story 3 fits in beautifully with tho previous two. This film is funny, sad, poignant, scary and exciting. I was surprised by how frank and adult some of the characters are and how death and loss was dealt with.

Since the last time we saw Woody and Buzz, Andy, their kid owner has grown up and stopped playing with them as much. He is now about to go off to college, but his mother makes him clean his room before he goes. Most of his toys are put in a box to be donated to the local preschool and once they get there, they think they're in toy heaven with tons of kids looking for hours of playtime all day long. There are hundreds of toys there, all happy to have this second-life as toys for new youngsters.

It turns out the preschool is run by a mad purple bear, Lotso, who is bitter because his owner abandoned him. He takes out his rage on the toys he doesn't like, forcing them to work the room with the very young kids who play rough. Lotso has a posse of enforcers, including Ken (Barbie's boyfriend), Big Baby (a big baby doll), Twitch (a big Alien insect) and Chunk (a rocky tough). They reset Buzz's memory so he becomes one of them and forgets his friends from Andy's house. It then becomes clear that the group has to escape, but to where? Andy has given them away and they have no other home.

Like the ones before, this is a very funny and fresh film with some great jokes that work for adults as well as kids. There's a whole love story between Ken and Barbie, suggesting that Ken is a clothes horse and rather vein. There are several great action/escape sequences that keep you on the edge of your seat.

One thing that was a big surprising to me was how Lotso is a very dark, angry character with almost nothing good going for him. He comes off as gregarious and bright at the beginning, opening his school to the new arrivals. But this is an act - and he is really an unfriendly, unloving character. I think this would be hard for kids to understand or deal with, especially because he comes off as a friend to begin with and then turns bad. Beyond this, his meanness seems to come from deep down inside him and he is unable to grow or change - even when it means the imminent deaths of the gang of friends. I guess he gets his just desserts in the end, but I'm not sure his punishment (which is basically a life of torture... also sorta dark, by the way) fits his crimes.

There are a few moments that seem more like a kids movie than an adult movie (like how Andy drives himself to college, which I don't buy considering his mother is so over-protective), but overall this is a sweet and fun movie, good for basically all ages.

I liked it a bit more than the first one and a bit less than the second one, but it was great overall. I did not see it in 3D, because I don't like the format very much and didn't want my feelings about that hurt my enjoyment of the film. Regardless, it worked well in a "2D" version, nonetheless. I guess there's a chance for a 4th one in the franchise... and I'm sure that one will be wonderful too.

Stars: 3 of 4