Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
7/18/10
Sequels,
generally speaking, are a kind of remake using (most of the time, at least)
the same performers and creative personnel. The original provides
a template upon which changes are worked without straying too far from
what made it worthy of a sequel in the first place. Usually, this
is a kind of artistic bankruptcy as the formula is milked to ever-diminishing
returns. The Toy Story franchise has found a very un-Hollywood
way around the limitation of telling essentially the same story again and
again: the movies about the adventures of Woody and Buzz Lightyear
really, seriously swish around the thematic implications of the toys-as-people
metaphor at their heart, each time from a different, increasingly mature
perspective. Toy Story 3, which restarts the franchise after
a business-related 11-year hiatus, goes to darker places than either of
its predecessors, but also to more hopeful ones, and sports a climax sure
to make virtually any sentient being cry. Those disinclined to ponder
its depths will no doubt still enjoy another fun riff on the idea of toys
with personalities and social structure. And there's some mighty
fine 3D on display to boot.
They've
always known this day was coming: Andy (voice of John Morris) is
headed off to college. The toys of his childhood sit long-forgotten
in a chest in his room and now they face the darker threats of charitable
donation, exile to the attic or <gulp> being thrown away. Under
the leadership of Andy's favorite toy, the plush cowboy Woody (Tom Hanks),
the toys continue to rally around the notion that they must “be there”
for their owner even if it means waiting decades for him to someday have
a child who might play with them. Andy decides to take Woody to college
with him and to take the rest, including plastic space hero Buzz Lightyear
(Tim Allen), to the attic, but a series of misunderstandings land the lot
of them in a daycare center where a stuffed bear called Lotso (Ned Beatty)
leads what seems like a utopian community where the toys will always have
children to play with them. Woody catches a ride out with one of
the daycare kids in hopes of making it home before Andy leaves for school,
leaving the other toys to learn the truth: the youngest daycare kids
beat their non-age-appropriate toys senseless and Lotsu cruelly forces
the new and weak toys to take the abuse while he and his cronies bask in
the love of the older kids. When Andy's toys try to leave, the bitter
bear (smarting over being lost and then replaced by his original owner)
creates a police state, with his victims locked in bins overnight and Buzz,
reset to his original factory settings, relentlessly guarding them.
Back at the home of kind little girl Bonnie (Emily Hahn), Woody gets to
know her happy toys but learns what's going on at the daycare and has no
choice: even if it means missing his ride to college, he's got to
go save his friends.
Make
no mistake, we are reaching the point of diminishing returns on direct
reenactment of Toy Story's highlights.
Toys with separation anxiety, Woody and Buzz breaking up in a huff, Buzz
returning to his original cocky personality, and a rescue mission to get
some or all of Andy's toys back to his room have been done now to the point
where there is essentially nothing new to say about them. As such,
there are points toward the middle of Toy Story 3 when I was starting
to get a little antsy about whether this was all headed anyplace I hadn't
been before. Luckily, the answer is yes, and Toy Story 3 is
that rarest of animals, a threequel that actually gets better the more
you think about it after the fact. The original TS looks at
its adventure from a child's point of view, concerned with learning to
get along and share, TS2 is about adolescent anxieties (coming to
terms with the fact that life is full of loss and must inevitably end)
and now TS3 turns to adult concerns about what kind of world we
want to live in and how our example can make it better or worse.
It presents us with two very different leaders whose issues have led their
constituencies astray. On the one hand, you have Woody, seeing the
Andy-centric world that comes from being Andy's favorite toys, and refuses
to let go of that vision: no matter what the future holds, it must
be Andy's choice and the toys the kid doesn't even know HAVE feelings must
abide by his decisions, until the end of time if need be. On the
other, there's Lotso, twisted by his replacement into a self-loathing despot
who thinks only of gathering and hoarding power to ensure he never has
to rely on another human or toy. The resolution of the daycare story
is well-done but not unexpected, but it's the decisions Woody and finally
Andy himself make about the future of the toys that will likely reduce
you to a quivering mass of bawling goo.
********SPOILER
ALERT: ENDING TALK TO FOLLOW******** What is perhaps most interesting
about how writer Michael Arndt (working from a story by Pixar icons John
Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich) sorts everything out is that
while Andy is still a teenager and the toys will always be children in
their own way, their destiny is so strikingly mature. Andy doesn't
really need the toys anymore: sure, he'd like to hang onto them as
reminders of a bygone childhood and maybe one day one of more of them would
even sit on a shelf in his office or den as a conversation piece.
But they can still bring joy to someone else, and with Woody's nudging,
he puts someone else's happiness ahead of his own mild self-interest (you'd
be surprised how rarely that actually happens) and in the process, without
even knowing it, allows his toys to join Bonnie's in creating a utopian
society where the toys don't simply play the roles their owners create
for them 24/7, but instead seek their own self-actualization during their
downtime. That squeeze toy Mr. Pricklepants (Timothy Dalton) even
had thespian ambitions to start with speaks volumes to the kind of atmosphere
that had already existed in Bonnie's room, where the toys thought of themselves
as simply playing games with their beloved owner rather than the, yes,
unhealthy levels of attachment Woody had encouraged Andy's toys to engage
in. Bottom line: everybody wants to be loved, but if you don't
know who you are outside of that love, then you're always going to be trapped
in anxiety and doubt. That TS3's characters grow up so totally
in the end makes the franchise quite unique, and caps the tale of Andy's
room and toys beautifully. And, of course, leads to much crying,
not the least bit because, while they may have clung to the notion entirely
too hard, the toys were right all along: Andy IS a good kid. ********END
OF SPOILERS********
The
beloved voice actors pick up right where they left off years ago, with
the sad exception that the late Jim Varney has been replaced by Blake Clark,
who does a solid job as Slinky Dog. Unexpected developments:
romance between Buzz and Jessie (Joan Cusack), and outrageous new uses
for Mr. And Mrs. Potato Head (Don Rickles and Estelle Harris) that rise
to the level of superpowers, particularly when his “parts” are affixed
to a tortilla so he can slip through a tiny vent. Barbie (Jodi Benson)
finds romance with the daycare's Ken (Michael Keaton), perhaps the movie's
greatest comic creation. The writers have asked themselves “What's
Ken without Barbie?”, particularly if he's got all the accessories.
Well, one heck of a metrosexual, that's what, hanging out in Ken's Dream
House and trying on his litany of outfits every night wishing any other
toy in his orbit knew how to accessorize. But because he was made
to be half of a couple, Ken IS a joiner, and it's a hoot to watch
him as part of Lotso's scheming goon squad until the love of Barbie finally
sets him free. This is certainly the only movie you'll ever see that
has Barbie dressed in an astronaut suit to impersonate Ken.... Elsewhere,
Beatty is perfect as the deceptively sweet and ultimately tyrannical Lotso.
While
the surfaces looked great in the 3D remasterings
of the first two Toy Stories released last fall, Toy Story 3
is the first Pixar movie that really nails the possibilities of the format,
a climactic sequence on a junkyard conveyor belt is among the greatest
of 3D sequences, with each piece of trash seeming to exist in its own space,
their movement along the belt discernible and the characters' being bogged
down within it also clear in a three-dimensional space. Lotso's squeezably
soft plush body, complete with realistic fur, is a triumph, as is the squishy
Stretch. And that tortilla is a marvel.
Toy
Story 3 is probably the least of the 3 movies due to the sheer volume
of repetitive material, but when it's on, it is ON, and the final half
hour is the best stuff in any of them. It's hard to imagine that
the public's love of these characters and the unthinkable amounts of money
to be made in the endeavor won't someday lead to a TS4, but if not, the
tale of Andy's room and the toys who called it home for a time has come
to a beautiful, poetic end. Not bad for a threequel.
PS:
Most theatrical screenings will be preceded by a Pixar short called Day
and Night, which has some trippy 3D effects of its own and is nearly
impossible to describe other than to say it's kinda weird and kinda sweet.
In a weird sort of way. |
