Fitting ending to a great trilogy

Rating: Null/10 (5 May 2014)

It is refreshing to see a third movie in a trilogy that's just as good if not better than the previous ones.
Such is the case with Toy Story 3 that continues the story of Woody and Buzz and all their friends. Time has come for Andy to go to college and the toys are yet again faced with the crisis of abandonment. It amazes me that Pixar has managed to tell pretty much the exact same story three times now yet it always feels fresh. Because the story really is always the same. Something happens to the toys that makes them fear they're going to be cast aside or forgotten, this fear leads them to overreact, which causes complications, adventures happen and in the end they've learned a lesson and everything turns for the better. It's like clockwork, it's that predictable, but strangely I don't mind. The circumstances do change and the story always changes a little bit, but I still think it would have been annoying if not for the iron tight storytelling of Pixar's finest.
A large part of it is also the fact that Toy Story is a very heavily character-driven franchise. And the characters do evolve. From Buzz and Woody becoming friends to the addition of new characters to the loss of old ones, the characters grow up along with us. And that doesn't change here. This movie has some of the best character moments in the whole trilogy and it's a fitting conclusion to their saga. Pretty much all the voice actors reprise their roles and they're as great as always.
My only real gripe about this film is the ending. I know a lot of people love it, but I think most of those people are a bit younger than I am. I'm a 90s kid and I grew up with Disney. I only started watching these movies as an adult. Whereas those kids that grew up in the 00s and with Pixar have a much more nostalgic relationship with the Toy Story characters. So for them the ending is a real tearjerker. For me it's one of the corniest things I've ever seen. I know what they were going for and for their target audience it very well might have been the exact right call, but it still doesn't remove the fact that my jaw literally dropped when I saw Andy acting the way he did. No 17-year-old I have ever met, seen or heard of would act that way in real life. Yes, it's a movie and allowed to take liberties, but you see the problem I'm having, right?
Nevertheless, it's a great movie. At times it's surprisingly dark, but never in a way that feels threatening or unnecessary. And it's always warmhearted, gentle, mature and uplifting. It's the perfect way to end this story.