TOY STORY 3; A tearful journey into the abyss

rating: 5

I'll keep this quick as you have probably read a thousand reviews already but, here's my two cents anyway; Toy Story 3 is the best film I've seen this year. Marvelously entertaining, with high doses of pure fun, relentless thrills and heaps of emotional depth, it's hard to see any other forthcoming movie working as effectively on the senses. None will play at your heartstrings more. None will spark involuntary floods of tears for a whole 30 minute sequence. No movie will get you as caught up in it's characters and their dark levels of anguish. No movie will make you smile wider, surprise and amaze you more on a technical level, or shift your memory from what it was like be four years old; to be eight years old, to be eleven, to be seventeen, or even the adult you are at interchanging emotional beats. If Toy Story 2 was about the aging process and the cycle of life from the P.O.V. of the toys, Toy Story 3 switches the emphasis onto YOU and YOUR feelings of letting go of attachments and relationships. It carries the most baggage of the trilogy because the sentiments are with us this time, not Jessie's harping back to her past owner Ellie or Woody being a famous toy. It's our attachment to their history rather than their love for each other (with one glaringly obvious exception, which is a sequence towards the end where you can't quite believe the dark corridor the movie goes into) and that's where the secret of it's success lies. For the most part, the toys understand and have come to terms with a now 17 year old Andy moving on to college without them, but as usual with the series, it's with Woody that we align ourselves and he's not ready to let go. Like a parent who has watched his loved one grow to become independent and is now struggling to imagine life without their son around to watch over everyday, we sympathise with Woody because all of us have had to say goodbye to things we have loved as we've gotten older. It's this thematic, which feels deeper than the one in the previous two movies, which meant this was a worthwhile story that had to be told. It's not because now technology has advanced so much at that they are able to have so many characters moving in the frame with such pain-staking and exquisite detail (though that's all there), it's because they had a story to tell with these characters that carried a heartful message to those who grew up with these characters. And that was simply, we should let them go. The beats of the movie go from an Indiana Jones serial, to a Great Escape P.O.W. thriller, to the ultimate of all Indy Jones serials and eventually a heartfelt finale that guarantee's there will be no dry eye left in the house. It's an exceptional film, even by the standards of Pixar. And it reminds us that these movies work because of the investment in the characters that this creative team, which hasn't changed much in two decades, put into each and every film. Marvel, DC Entertainment, Platinum Dunes and every other studio who are working with much loved franchises right now and are often struggling to make them work, should take note.