Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) and Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) are back. It’s been 11 years but these toys have aged well while owner Andy has matured. Receiving little playtime, and with Andy leaving home for college, the toys find themselves sent to Sunnyside daycare. Despite the name, things are not quite as they appear—forcing the gang to reunite with Andy.
I haven’t seen Toy Story in about 15 years, and I haven’t seen Toy Story 2, but director Lee Unkrich and Pixar guru John Lasseter start everything off in a friendly manner that will please series fans as well as new viewers. This is great news for families with little ones in the target demographic who likely weren’t even born at the time of Toy Story 2’s release.
Even if you’ve been keeping up with the series it is evident that Pixar’s team has come a long ways with CGI animation. Old characters like Woody retain the same artistic style we are accustomed to seeing. When he comes across a furry monkey playing cymbals, you have to do a double take. Another scene of photo-realism has some of the toys in a garbage bag. If you didn’t know any better, you’d swear there was a creature squirming around inside a garbage bag before your very eyes.
A big part of the fun is in how Pixar always finds a creative use for the toys, giving each a brief moment in the spot light. The See n’ Say is put to use like a roulette table. Mr. Potato Head steals the show when his parts seek out a new body. There is also a surprising cameo from Studio Ghibli mascot, the Totoro. It’s not that surprising considering that Disney has North American distribution rights to their films.
This time around there are a lot of shots of people. Since Andy’s relationship with the toys is a big part of the story, this makes sense. My gripe is that with all the people on screen we lose focus on seeing the world from the view of the toys. In Toy Story, leaving out the humans was a practicality; they were tough to render and didn’t look very appealing. By cropping them out as much as possible, the movie focuses on the story of toys. Now that Pixar artists can do anything they imagine, they unfortunately overlooked the narrative style that the original mastered. Granted, the movie is largely told from the perspective of Woody and sometimes Buzz or another figurine, but the human faces chip away at the obstacles toys face in a world made by humans. Environments are no longer daunting.
Toy Story 3 is the first in the series to be displayed in 3D. By now you’ve either figured out that you are paying extra to see the same movie, or you are getting a headache.
Still, there’s something about the toys that troubles me. Almost every toy has the capacity to talk, even if they weren’t built with sound capability. That’s fine but how come the dinosaur talks like a grown American male while the horse is reduced to whimpering like a dog? Also, the first film established that the toys can move in the presence of people, yet even when in the most dire of circumstances they still opt to go limp. These movies show an imaginary side of our lives that only exists if we don’t look for it, so it’s still believable that the toys have a sacred pact to not come alive in our midst.
Toy Story 3 doesn’t quite reach the emotional rollercoaster levels of other recent Disney/Pixar films, possibly because of its lighter subject matter. However, the inherent nostalgia value of the toys creates vast appeal. Toy Story 3 is a worthy successor that retains the cross generational humor of the original and effectively wraps up the series. A third installment can’t ask for much more. ***
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