This movie didn't have any characters.

Rating: 2/10 (14 July 2010)

I'm not sure why nobody else has noticed that this movie had no characters. It was incredibly disappointing to walk out of the theater realizing that this is the best movie of the summer and there were no meaningful interactions between the characters. Strangely enough, the appeal of the first movie was inverted; in Toy Story, we were surprised and delighted to see toys have emotions like human beings, and in Toy Story 3, we are apparently satisfied (duped?) into enjoying allegedly human personalities thrown around as toys.
In the first movie, Woody is the hero and leader of the toys, then he meets Buzz and his personality is suddenly conflicted. Watching the tension between these characters build and break was legitimately interesting, a sort of Shakespearean kids' movie. It took the silly idea of animated toys and turned it into a real drama. Now, in the third movie, the drama is artificial and stupid; it comes from an outside evil force that has only a shallow personality and cannot be swayed. The main characters are only good people in a bad situation, which they need to get out of. THEY DID NOT DO ANYTHING TO GET INTO THIS SITUATION; their only duty is to escape. Nothing meaningful happens to them.
In the first movie, too, the cognitive dissonance between "toys being played with" and "toys acting up when nobody sees them" was very small. Woody was the same person whether or not there were kids in the room. In the third movie, somehow there is a complete disconnect between these two behaviors. Woody is not really a toy, but a sort of soul-infused plastic man who is forced to be a full-time actor, who performs "improv" for the kids and needs to be "in character". The deep, unexplained longing of the toys for children to come back and play with them is more than a little creepy.
In short, the metaphor of Toy Story is broken by this sequel, and no meaningful story is told. I would not show it to my kids. I'm sorry I watched it. Two stars for a decent ending scene.