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As posted on Hijinks Inc. Please visit our site and tell us what you think!
I’d like to begin this review by saying I actually went to the 3D version of this movie. This was my first experience with the new digital 3D movies and I must say, I don’t see what the big deal was. Maybe this movie just didn’t take full advantage of the 3D (it seems everything is hyping the fact that they are in 3D these days, do we really need this many?), but if this is what a regular 3D experience is like in the theaters, it’s totally not worth the extra money. Yeah, the movie trailers at the beginning were really cool because it was this brand new experience and my eyeballs were all like, “Whoa! I can see things in a whole new way, this is fantastic!”, but as the movie went along it quickly started to look like the regular version. It was at this point that my eyes were like, “Alright, why did I pay the extra money for this? I can hardly remember this thing is in 3D in the first place until I pay attention to the added depth, but then I’m not paying attention to the actual movie anymore, just the novelty of the 3D.” Maybe I just missed it, maybe I’m not evolved enough to truly enjoy the 3D experience, but I digress.
The movie itself was fantastic, but what I really walked away from the theater with was an appreciation for the short that Pixar included before the movie, as they do with all their flicks. This one was called Day & Night, here’s the official write up for it:
“When Day, a sunny fellow, encounters Night, a stranger of distinctly darker moods, sparks fly! Day and Night are frightened and suspicious of each other at first, and quickly get off on the wrong foot. But as they discover each other’s unique qualities — and come to realize that each of them offers a different window onto the same world — the friendship helps both to gain a new perspective.”
At this point, my eyes were still on their visual joyride and I was really digging the 3D experience. It was such a simple little film and I was busy laughing at how these two animated little guys were showing off and trying to one up each other, and next thing I knew I was being hit by this really touching, meaningful story about friendship and overcoming each other’s differences to grow as individuals and work together. It was pretty cool.
Toy Story 3, released in theaters June 18, 2010, started off by making a decision that really made the movie. Instead of giving us another story with Andy as a small child playing with his toys and the craziness that ensues, they decided to let Andy grow up, and he’s about to go off to college. Of course, college kids need toys, but they buy much more expensive toys, ipads and Xbox 360s, not cowboys and spacemen. So as Andy gets ready to leave for college, his mom is encouraging him to get rid of his toys, or at least store them up in the attic. In the process of storing them, all of them but Woody that is, there’s a mix-up and they end up out on the corner with the trash.
After making a daring escape, the toys decide if Andy doesn’t want them anymore, they might as well go off with the other donations to the daycare where at least they’ll be played with. Woody tries to talk them out of it and tell them that Andy actually wanted to store them instead of throw them away, but of course, none of them are listening and instead they all head off to the daycare.
Once there, at first they think this is a magical, happy place filled with a never-ending supply of kids to play with them. They quickly find that the daycare chain of command, of toys that is, is run more like a tyrannical prison with a ruthless warden, Lots-O’-Huggin’ Bear. Things get worse when Buzz goes to Lotso asking for a change of scenery, getting moved from the toddler room to the more age appropriate room where the kids play more gently with them, and instead gets brainwashed and turned into Lotso’s right hand man! Brainwashing is so much easier when you only have to flip a switch from his current ‘play’ mode back to his original ‘demo’ mode.
After escaping the daycare and finding solace at the home of the sweetest little girl, Woody finds out about the seedy underside of the daycare and Lotso’s iron fisted style of rule. So Woody bravely sneaks back in and devises a plan to break everybody out of this accursed daycare! The jailbreak scenes are some of the funniest parts of the movie, as Buzz gets switched out of ‘demo’ mode and into ‘español’ and Mr. Potato Head gets stuck in a sandbox and finds a creative new way of getting around. Of course, the route they choose to escape is through the garbage chute, and they get there just as the trash is being picked up. So instead of a clean getaway, (Haha! Get it? CLEAN get away? Cause now they’re in the trash and they’re dirty! Ha! *cough* sorry, I get carried away sometimes… moving on) they are transported to the local dump.
Now this is the big spoiler part here, skip down to Dave’s Quick Hits if you want to experience all the dramatic twists and turns on your own. Of course, now that they are in the dump, they are grabbed, swept, and pushed through all these crazy contraptions and save Lotso from a certain demise. (Oh yeah, Lotso got stuck in the dumpster with them, so now they are all in the dump together.) And after saving Lotso and helping him out of the trash to reach the emergency stop button and save all of their lives, gasp, he turns on them! What a tool! So now Woody, Buzz, and all of our other friends are tasked with looking their death right in the face as they slowly lower down into the incinerator.
This is the part that sorta got me. All sorts of people told me that they cried at the end of the movie. I thought, ‘wow, if this is how they end it, kudos to Pixar! Talk about a ground breaking, dark ending for a kid’s movie!’ But of course, that wasn’t the ending; they get saved at the last minute just like every other movie. The toys then luck out and catch a ride home on the garbage truck. In the end, Andy decides to donate all his toys to that sweet little girl that helped Woody escape and they all watch Andy drive off to college as they settle into their new home with with their new kid. Of course, there’s the obligatory ‘tug at your heart strings’ moment when Andy gets all the toys out of the box and plays with the little girl before realizing Woody was also in the box and he has to give away his favorite childhood toy. Honestly, I think they went over the edge with how they decided to end it. A friend of mine said he felt like they were telling us to go home and hug all of our toys. But it’s a kid’s movie, they usually go way out there with the sappy endings, so it’s not a huge deal.
Dave’s Quick Hits: A really fun movie, great for kids and adults, a great finish to the trilogy, tries too hard to pull at the heart strings at the end, 8 out of 10
The Wife’s Thoughts: The 3D glasses made it feel like things were flying over my head, it was funny at first but took a turn to be too sad, it ended happy enough, I would definitely let kids watch this, I’ll give it an 8 out of 10
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 99% Fresh
