Review – Toy Story 3
June 17, 2010 by Tracey Brown
Filed under Reviews
Toy Story 3 is an utterly charming and enjoyable film. It is easily as good as the first two Toy Story movies and, in a number of ways, it is even better. It is beautiful to look at; full of many highly amusing (and genuinely emotional) moments, but also mixes in the more serious themes of growing up and accepting change.
The film starts with Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and the whole gang panicking that their owner, Andy, is going off to college. They worry about what will become of them, now that Andy is all “grown up”. Will they be put in the attic to be handed down to the kids Andy might have some day? Or will they be donated to other children who will play with them again? Or will they experience the worst fate a toy can face, being thrown away? The ever optimistic Woody is convinced that Andy will take care of them, but the other toys are not convinced. They would prefer to be donated, but things don’t exactly turn out how they planned and they get into many scrapes and adventures trying to get back home.
One of the best things about Toy Story 3 is the amount of laughs it has and a lot of the most amusing moments are provided by the new characters. Ken (Michael Keaton) is of course, smitten with Barbie (Jodi Benson); Mr. Pricklepants (Timothy Dalton) is a hammy actor/hedgehog; Lots-O’-Huggin’ Bear (Ned Beatty) is not always as cuddly as he might seem; Chuckles the Clown (Bud Luckey) has a “tortured” past and adorable Trixie the Triceratops (Kristen Schaal) becomes the perfect buddy for Rex (Wallace Shawn).
But most of the laughs are at Ken’s expense. Young kids may not get all of the Barbie and Ken jokes, like his endless series of outfits from the 60’s to the 80’s and his ‘dream house” (which actually belonged to Barbie in “real life”) but their mothers and grandmothers will get a kick out of them. The most hilarious moments in the film are when Buzz’s “Spanish Mode” is accidentally turned on and he turns into the smooth “Latin Lover Buzz”, who is much more successful than the shy, “normal” Buzz at charming and wooing cowgirl Jesse (Joan Cusack). (It is worth noting that Spanish Buzz does a mean paso doble!)
The genuine emotional moments that come near the end of Toy Story 3 (as Andy is heading off to college) are noteworthy because the Pixar team succeeds again, where most “live action” films fail, in making an audience care about the fate of the characters in a film and in creating moments of real emotion that people can identify with – even if the characters are computer generated. There is much more to this movie than just entertaining kids for 90 minutes.
As with most films in 3-D lately, it is not necessary for Toy Story 3 to use this technology, except perhaps to show off the spectacular old west action sequence that starts the film, which is pretty impressive in 3-D. But with the advances in computer animation in the past 13 years, Toy Story 3 will still look great in theaters without 3-D
Thankfully, even though Toy Story 3 is a sequel, children (and adults) who have not seen the first two Toy Story films will still be able to thoroughly enjoy this movie together.
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