It's No Fun to Grow Up

Rating: 9/10 (7 February 2011)

This delightful entry in the Pixar trilogy finds our familiar troupe of toys (led of course by Woody and Buzz Lightyear) despondent and adrift when they are donated to a day care facility instead of accompanying their friend and owner (Andy) to college. Most of the film details the toys' efforts to escape, but it's bookended by one of the most hilarious openings in film history and one of the most poignant and bittersweet endings.
Our friends at Pixar as usual have their finger directly on the pulse of cultural currents, and it's not hard to read the toys' plight as an allegory for the very real jobless plight affecting so many Americans right now. But more than that, the film captures the happy/sad feeling of growing up and that sense you have when you're an adult that the world contains much less wonder than it did when you were a kid. The ending of this film nearly had me bawling, and I feel like bawling right now just writing about it.
Grade: A