Toy Story was a phenomenal benchmark in animation and helped shape a generation of youths. Not satisfied with just being the first fully CG animated movie, Toy Story rocketed to ‘infinity and beyond’ levels of timelessness with its mature writing and adult voice actors portraying kid-centred stories, and it managed to equal (and in some levels surpass) that success with its sequel and cemented itself as one of the crowning franchises for kids and adults to enjoy on different levels. When Toy Story 3 was released ten years after the last film, there’s no doubt there would’ve been some hesitation to see if they would stick the landing, and thankfully they did just that. The blissful life that Andy’s toys used to live has finally come to an unpleasant end now that a grown-up Andy  is heading off to college. The remaining toys try to consider what comes next, with Woody (voiced again by Tom Hanks) hoping that the rest of his friends will be put in the attic while he goes off to college with Andy.  After a mistake results in all the toys except Woody thinking they were going to be thrown out, they all end up being inadvertently being donated to Sunnyside Daycare. Upon arriving, it appears to be a toy haven run by a friendly bear called Lotso (voiced by Ned Beatty), but this doesn’t stop Woody from leaving to return to Andy. It soon becomes clear that Sunnyside is an awful place, where certain toys are being mistreated by the younger kids and the original toys (lead by Lotso) enjoy the pleasant life and subjugate the other toys to keep a system. Discovering that his friends are in danger, Woody decides to return to Sunnyside to rescue his friends and bring them all home before Andy leaves for college. Toy Story 3 was a massive success when it was released, becoming one of the highest grossing animated films (earning over $1 billion worldwide), got nominated for five Academy Awards (winning two including Best Animated Feature), and satisfied most with its conclusive ending to the beloved franchise.

Looking over the history for this film is fascinating as the original idea for Toy Story 3 had pretty much nothing to do with what eventually went to screen. Originally it was going to be handled by a new Disney studio called Circle Seven Animation (this was when Disney still owned all the rights to the sequels of Pixar films without their consent) and they came up with two scripts and ideas for films; one involving a whodunit style murder mystery (which doesn’t sound like much but could’ve led to some fun jokes), and one involving the group sending a malfunctioning Buzz to be fixed in a factory in Taiwan and then preventing him from being recalled and dismantled (which honestly sounds like a great idea, but wouldn’t have worked for a conclusive film). After a deal was met between Pixar and Disney, the studio’s stories were scrapped, and they started fresh with familiar Pixar talent and created the story that would become the third film. As a final film in the trilogy (at least at the time), this set-up is a perfect end point and feels like where the story should and would naturally go. Seeing Andy grow up and leave for college is a big deal and seeing the toys decide what to do now that their owner is too old is also pretty engaging, especially because these movies pretty much grew up with their audience (with the time gap allowing kids who grew up with the first film to be roughly Andy’s age when this one came out). Even the idea of a daycare being presented as fluffy, innocent and toy heaven, but instead is revealed to be a dictatorial prison run by a psychotic toy where the lesser toys are tortured by under-aged children through rough play, it mixes that satirical irony with every-day human activities, and makes it messed up from the perspective of a toy while also acting as a big and memorable dilemma that needs to be escaped from. Even amongst the other movies, this film is bizarrely intense and handles suspense surprisingly strongly, especially since it devolves into a prison-break film during the latter half of the film and gets extremely intense come the climax within a garbage dump. It feels elevated and treats itself like its finishing off a big franchise in a big way and it manages to capture a nice conclusive atmosphere that is equally rewarding and emotional, while still feeling like the traditional Toy Story everybody knows and loves. However, a perfect ending for the franchise doesn’t make for a perfect film, and Toy Story 3 doesn’t work as strongly as its two predecessors, and a lot of that is due to it being weirdly unpleasant in parts. A majority of the time spent in the daycare is so miserable and mean-spirited that it works too effectively and becomes too oppressive to the point where there’s no relief. The film still features a few funny scenes and some nice emotional moments, but overall its just characters being upset, abandoned and distraught and its like that for a majority of the film as the opening and especially the ending doesn’t come across as any less aggressive. Also the ending, while very touching and relatable to certain age ranges, definitely carries a cheesy edge that is deliberately trying to tug at heartstrings and may feel a little manipulative and corny with age.

The cast of characters that you’ve grown to love over these past few films are mostly still here, but it has been greatly shrunken due to several toys being shafted out as time moved on. This works showing the passage of time and it condenses the characters down to the classic roster of favorites (outside of Bo Peep who is oddly sidelined in this), and it’s smart that they picked these cast of characters due to how well they work as an ensemble. While they are usually separated in the other films even though they still play a role, having them all together in this final film really results in a fun experience with all of them having roughly the same amount of screen time and each contributing to the end result. All the voice actors are still great and carry that nice edge of comedic but heartfelt that this franchise has always handled so effectively, and its nice that the new faces they introduce are still great memorable faces. Lotso as a villain is very effective; his innocent cuddly design and frail elderly voice hiding this psychotic malicious and cruel-hearted character who was twisted by an understandable tragedy makes for a great character to hate. Easily the strongest highlights in terms of new faces as well as some of the stand-out moments in the film comes from Barbie and Ken (voiced by Jodi Benson and Michael Keaton). There’s already so much you can make fun of and satirize about these two as a toy and as a brand in general, but the vocal performances from both of them as well as most of their scenes are legitimately really funny and make for some of the best moments in the film (arguably providing a lot of the more pleasant fun scenes in this movie).

On a technical level, this movie’s jump in animation quality from the second film is truly noticeable and really shows the leaps and bonds that were taken over the ten years away from the franchise. Not only do all the toys look great with their textures, unique movements, and expressions, but probably the biggest accomplishment is that the people look like real people and not melting wax figures. Its not like they were included a lot in these films anyway, but seeing them overcome one of the few aspects of their earlier films that didn’t age well from a  visual standpoint is very nice. While it is definitely a massive upgrade and does have its decent share of pretty visuals, a majority of this movie is oddly muted in the color palette and is instead replaced with a lot of ugly browns, yellows, and greens. Its odd to think that this movie is going out of its way to be dark tonally as well as visually by making everything look and feel muggy and harshly lit, but all it does is make the movie not look as good as it could’ve. Both the first and second film touch on darker topics, but they didn’t lose their bright color palette and warm lighting, so whether it was a stylistic choice or just a consequence of where the film is located, its a noticeable change between films that wasn’t for the better. It’s the most obvious in the daycare which could’ve been a visually pleasing location but because its spent so much in the dark and under moody lighting, it lacks any distinctiveness and just becomes any random locale even though the bright upbeat colors originally helped create a contrasting craziness from the brutal playtime showcased on-screen, but it isn’t too much of an issue.

Toy Story 3 could’ve gone overboard with its finale and made the ending to this momentous franchise not work as soundly as it did, but it managed to pull it off about as correctly as you could’ve that even after the creation of a completely unnecessary Toy Story 4 (and now an eventual 5 because, of course), people still to this day consider this to be the true ending to the Toy Story franchise. The movie is definitely a good film with a lot of great qualities; its cast is still great and well utilized, the technology has greatly improved, the movie is surprisingly intense and suspenseful, and it wraps up a franchise that was fifteen years old and managed to satisfy both its kid and adult audience. Its not a perfect film and its hard to say its superior to its previous two as it is weak in some of the tonally compartments, but otherwise acts as a nice closing chapter for a lot of people’s early lives and the start of many beautiful memories to be birthed in the future.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,