Funny, compassionate, heart-warming... and dark.

Rating: 9/10 (31 July 2010)

This was, bluntly speaking, brilliant. Most definitely better than the first, and certainly on par with the second – Toy Story 3 has it all: it's heart-warming, funny, iconic and actually somewhat scary in some places.
It got off to a slow start, but it was necessary exposition – Andy being all grown-up and ready to move to college, and the toys being accidentally donated by Andy's mom to the Sunnyside Day Care Centre. Even when the Day Care Centre Toys introduced themselves and Ken showed them round, I was left sitting in the cinema thinking "But where can the film go from here? It can't just be Woody arguing with the others about going back to Andy to live in the loft for eternity."
Then, as playtime was drawing near, and all the toys hid and cowered in fear, that was when I knew that the film was beginning. But that was a good half hour in. The slow start is, in my opinion, the only thing that lets the film down.
That said, what followed was fantastic, and... incredibly dark. Yikes, Pixar! A Day Care Centre run as a prison, "run by an evil bear that smelt of strawberries"? The climax where the toys face their impending doom? The baby with the dodgy eye? And the monkey... that monkey! It made three kids cry in the cinema I watched it at. That monkey's shrieks were the scariest sounds I've ever heard in a Pixar film. No wonder it's classified as a PG!
I'd highly recommend Toy Story 3 to anyone and everyone though. While it's certainly a darker tale compared to the other two, it also has incredibly heart-warming moments, and the comedy is the best of the three (I'd like to say now though that Ham and Slinky were under-used). Overall: Excellent!
P.S: Beware that monkey. It's shrieks emit from the darkest depths of Hell.