Toy Story 3
Directed by Lee Unkrich
The only thing wrong with Toy Story 3, and I mean the only thing, is that Pixar and Disney (its parent company) are practically forcing you to see it in 3-D. The gimmicky technology in no way enhances, improves, or intensifies the experience of watching this hilarious, involving, intelligent, and heartfelt knockout; indeed, the 3-D distraction is something of a hindrance when it comes to enjoying and appreciating a production that is not only the year’s best so far but is, without question, the best sequel-to-a-sequel ever made.
The original Toy Story (1995) was a revolutionary piece of work, not only in the way it dispensed entirely with traditional hand-drawn animation but also in the way it chose to tell its surprisingly intricate comic tale. Its director, John Lasseter, brought realistic filmmaking techniques to bear on the story of toys coming to life whenever people aren’t looking.
“What the guys were doing was more like live action than animation,” says Lee Unkrich, who came to Pixar to edit the original film and ended up the director of Toy Story 3. “I think they didn’t even know that themselves. . . . We were doing something new and interesting. Obviously we were creating animation, but it was within a wrapper of live action, almost.”
Toy Story’s amalgam of broad comedy and heart-pounding action-adventure, in which both the comedy and the adventure depend on fast-paced inventiveness, demonstrated that, with its very first movie, Pixar had developed a mature style of its own. Far less earnest and far more contemporary than the moral journeys offered up by Disney’s fairy tales and animal stories, the Pixar style went on to jazz up the superhero genre (The Incredibles), the working-class buddy comedy (Monsters Inc.), the science-fiction dystopia (Wall-E), the glamorpuss-trapped-in-a-small-town fable (Cars), the get-off-my-lawn-old-guy sentimental drama (Up), and the literal fish-out-of-water story (Finding Nemo).
Toy Story is a comedy about status anxiety, in which favored plaything Woody the Sheriff finds himself supplanted by the shiny new Buzz Lightyear and is eventually accused by the other toys of murdering Buzz. The second Toy Story is an abandonment-anxiety comedy, as Woody faces the possibility that he will be forgotten by his owner. In some ways the most daring of them all is the newest film, which is a comedy about the anxiety of facing the end—the end of childhood, the end of a community, even the end of life itself.
Sound pretentious? Toy Story 3 is anything but. The movie is a celebration of the imagination—both of children who are able to bring fantasies and dreams to life with whatever is at hand and, implicitly, of the people at Pixar, who managed to craft a group of unforgettable characters out of the most obvious stereotypes.
Woody is the aw-shucks hero never able to contain his self-satisfaction at being Andy’s favorite toy. Buzz is the ramrod-straight noble soul who must grapple with the fact that he is a toy when everything tells him he is actually an intergalactic space ranger. Rex is the killer dinosaur as urban neurotic; Hamm the pig is the calm cynic at every church picnic; Jessie the cowgirl is the high-strung optimist ready to crash into pessimism at a moment’s notice.
Toy Story 3 adds several hilarious new characters. A surprisingly intellectual Barbie meets her match in a very confused Ken whose obsession with his wardrobe leads to a gag involving high-heeled shoes that will be shown in cinematic-highlight reels for decades to come. And a soft, strawberry-scented Care Bear (lightly disguised by screenwriter Michael Arndt as “Lotso-huggin’ bear”) is the seemingly benevolent but entirely ruthless dictator of a day care center where Andy’s toys find themselves imprisoned; his enforcer is a giant, expressionless baby doll.
The movie is constantly on the move, its plot points meticulously timed, its pacing right to the second.
One of the things the clockwork Toy Story 3 reveals is just how flaccid Pixar’s most recent efforts, Ratatouille and Wall-E and Up, have been. There’s no fat here, as there wasn’t in Finding Nemo and the flawless Monsters Inc. and The Incredibles.
The result is that when Toy Story 3 approaches its climax, even a middle-aged adult might find it hard to breathe. And the final five minutes are almost unbearably moving, which is a pretty amazing achievement and a tribute to the seriousness with which Pixar’s creative talents accepted the challenge of living up to the high standard set by the original movie and its sequel.
Toy Story 3 brings the three-picture series to a conclusion so perfect even Disney (now the owner of Pixar) may be able to resist the temptation to go for a fourth even after this spectacular achievement makes a billion dollars worldwide. Which it will.
John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, is The Weekly Standard’s movie critic.
