I raise my hat to you, Pixar

Rating: 9/10 (31 March 2011)

First of all: I am now a 20 years old student and you could say I am in the process of becoming an adult and maybe that is one of the reasons Toy Story 3 had such a strong impact on me, because I could really relate to Andy, but that is not everything.
It is easy to pick apart a movie you hated, but it is hart to express why you loved a certain movie because you feel you completely got to share all the emotions it evoked in you to a full extent with your readers, which is really, really difficult. That is why I won't go that much into detail about every aspect of the film. I won't summarize the storyline, talk about the voice acting, the music, the stunning visuals, stuff like this. I'll just try to explain why this movie (or Pixar movies in general, that is) is so amazingly powerful. Like any Pixar movie, it excels at both: comedy and drama, and while it had it's funny moments (some hilarious ones actually, Ken and Latino Buzz) the main reason this movie will be remembered by me is the final act which had me on the edge of my seat like literally NO movie before and crying like no movie before. (I was really thankful for those 3D-glasses that prevented my friends from seeing the tears in my eyes, but maybe they were crying as well. Actually my eyes are filled with tears as I am writing this right now.) I grew up with the Toy Story movies and as my childhood is coming to an end, the Toy Story Saga is, too, and even though I never owned a Woody or a Buzz or any other toy out of the movie, they were a part of my life. The movie reminds you of those days when you were a child, when you were allowed to dream, you were free and innocent. And even though as time goes by life's problems come crushing down on you, in every adult deep deep down there is still a tiny spark of memory about this and Toy Story 3 brings it all back up again. It reminds you how important it is to never forget this time and that you still got it in you, but also that you might need to move on and say goodbye at certain points in life. There are things worth preserving, but that does not mean you should cling to them for all time, which is why the passing of the torch at the end e.g Andy giving his toys to a worthy new owner is such a good last point to this trilogy.
Friendship, Love, those are strong words which often get thrown around in movies yet mean NOTHING there, I usually find myself laughing at romantic movies or the likes that are supposed to be sad, but damn, Pixar you made me cry about FICTIONAL toys and I was emotionally attached to our protagonists like I never imagined possible. The amazing ending scene has been discussed and analyzed a lot here by people who explained everything that is going on there much better than I could probably do, so I'll wont focus on it and instead share my thoughts about the strongest scene in the movie (or ANY movie EVER, I am serious about this) in my opinion: The incinerator scene was just UNBELIEVABLE. You are used to expect happy endings in certain kind of movies (e.g family movies, cheap action movies etc.) and never feel any excitement because of this, but in this particular scene Pixar had me really believing "Oh god, this might actually be the end of it all, how DARE they to do this to us", and while one part of me would have appreciated the movie for it's courage if it actually would have ended there, with the friends holding hands while facing destruction, the other part (the bigger one) could not have lived with this. The scene worked PERFECTLY. You forgot that you were watching a movie. Those were your friends that were going to die. You felt the fear, you felt the relief. It felt real, and while fictional movies don't portray real EVENTS - they still deliver real emotions. How this could be pulled off so amazingly well in TS 3 is beyond me. I bow down to you Pixar.