Toy Story 3: The Pitch-Perfect Finale

Rating: 8/10 (5 February 2011)

I mentioned in my reviews of both Toy Story and Toy Story 2 being in the original audience toward which these films were targeted. Indeed, it seemed the very same prospect for Toy Story 3, its plot element of Andy's departure for college mirroring my own, due for little over a month later than the film's release.
Picking up some twelve years after the previous installment, Toy Story 3 explores the familiar toys' fears and doubts when it is revealed that Andy will be leaving for college. Many of the characters of the previous films have already been disposed of, and when the remaining toys find themselves mistakenly donated to a day-care centre rather than placed in the attic, they assume the same has become of them, refusing to believe Woody's insistence otherwise.
Following on a highly successful pair of films over a decade later is never going to be an easy thing to do. Purists will bring an assumed cynicism, as so often they ought to; changing factors in audience expectations will surely result in some differences to the stories that were so loved the first time around; returning to something so beloved after so long a time surely cannot be a wise move. Most famously applicable to the first two Godfather films, the classically untouchable critically acclaimed masterpiece duo, there are few arguments to support a late return to a well-remembered franchise. Toy Story 3 handles this gracefully, its opening shot a direct invitation to nostalgia of the first. Naturally, the film is replete with callbacks to the first and second, never forgetting its cherished roots and always delicately careful to avoid doing anything to exploit or shame them. The opening scene is wonderful, another of the fantastical imaginative scenarios of young Andy, whom we thereafter observe aging through the years. It is a bittersweet beginning, the joy we see in the elaborate and hilarious Western parody of an opening scene soon replaced with a lamentative overtone, the inevitable out-dating of these toys dominating the overall mood. Not, that is to say, that the film isn't entirely packed with laughs throughout; many were the times I found myself short on breath. The primary plot takes on the form and conventions of a traditional genre (potential spoilers shall see me refraining from identifying precisely which), and this is a nice structure to give to the film. New characters become as beloved as old, unseen turns keep the narrative fresh, and a certain element of the film is genuinely quite terrifying. A certain scene toward the end of the film is shockingly dark, its complexity startlingly thought-provoking, disarmingly beautiful, and yet further evidence of the piece's resounding overall thematic darkness. Although we may laugh at the escapades in which the characters entangle themselves, there is the ever-present knowledge that at best, they are returning to be placed in a dusty attic for long-term storage. Many have considered this a parental allegory; the idea of "our kid" growing up obviously reflects the ideas of being outgrown by somebody whom you've spent years in the company of. For me, as I suspect is the case for many others, the film reflects growing up, moving on, letting go of the past, and saying a fond farewell to childhood. Toy Story was one of the big movies of my earliest years, and here, fifteen years on, it is time for Andy, me, and my contemporaries to leave behind all that the memories of the original film represent. It is the kind of film which likely holds a personal resonance for most everyone who sees it, and certainly a film which bears no age limit, its universality another of the many facets of this fantastic work. Expect a warm trickle down your cheek in the final scene, the pitch-perfect finale sealing the cinematic legacy of this milestone trilogy.
Dark in the vein of Pixar's more modern works, Toy Story 3 manages to combine the well established and beloved characters with a deeply dark emotional story, typically brilliant comedy, and a thought-provoking personal relevance which inevitably endeared me even more to it. Managing even to top the personally cherished Wall-E, Toy Story 3 is not only a worthy addition to one of cinema's most consistently excellent trilogies, it is its best.