To be 9 again - Toy Story 3 Review.

Rating: 10/10 (18 June 2010)

As a 24 year old I grew up with the Toy Story movies, and they had a big impact on my childhood. I remember going to burger king many times getting all the Toy Story toys. So when I went to see the new movie, needless to say I had extremely HIGH expectations.
The second the movie started, I didn't feel like there had been a 15 year gap between the movies. I felt right at home with all the toys again. It feels like the same movies that I grew up with, with some graphical improvements. All the old characters we know and love make a comeback, as well as some new ones, which feel like they were part of the story all along. Pixar did an absolutely brilliant job giving toys emotion. I found myself falling in love with all the old, and even some new characters all over again.
The actual story line is brilliant. If it took 15 years to think up this perfect story line than it was well worth the wait. As I said my expectations were extremely high going into this movie, and they were surpassed and then some. Even though I am a grown up now, the movie took me back to an age of innocence and an let me be my 9 year old self for just a moment which is a truly magical feeling. Pixar is brilliant at creating a story line that both adults and children will love. They still sneak in moments that only adults will understand. My favorite example of this is a Cool Hand Luke reference. I won't say exactly what happens so as not to spoil anything, but someone intimates the warden perfectly. I found myself a couple of moments in the movie holding back tears to the point where my throat starts hurting. I just had to keep telling myself "I'm not going to be the guy that cries at a Toy Story movie." Lets take a moment to talk about the animation. In an article in Wired magazine, the creators of Toy Story 3 said each frame takes anywhere from 6-12 hours to render depending on the complexity of the scene. There are 60 frames in every second so lets do some quick math. It takes about 540 hours of rendering to produce one second of this movie. 32,400 hours to produce a minute. If you keep going and figure out how many hours the entire movie took, well you get a really really big number. The result is toys with more human characteristics, realistic looking fur, scenes with so much attention to detail you could watch the scene 100 times and still look at something new each time.
The 3D effects weren't mind blowing or revolutionary. But hey this is a cartoon, and what better way to experience this movie than in 3D. There aren't any gimmicky moments (thank god). The best use of 3D was actually during the short before the movie called Night and Day. This short will just blow your mind I promise. But back to Toy Story 3there were some scenes that I can't talk about that really showed the capability of 3D and made you feel like you were right there with the toys.
Is the movie worth the money? Yes. Is it as good as the old movies? It's better.
You will laugh, you will cry, you will get an overwhelming scenes of nostalgia. Pixar knows how to bring an end to an epicly huge Trilogy. Thank you for the memories and the experience Pixar!