Toy Story 3
Director: Lee Unkrich
Writers: story by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, and Lee Unkrich, screenplay by Michael Arndt
Producer: Darla K. Anderson
Featuring the vocal talents of: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Ned Beatty, Don Rickles, Michael Keaton, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Estelle Harris, John Morris, Jodi Benson, Emily Hahn, Laurie Metcalf, Blake Clark, Teddy Newton, Timothy Dalton
I really do hope this is the last one. Toy Story 3 has a scene where young Andy (voiced by John Morris) is emptying his childhood bedroom, preparing to leave for college, and his mother sees the bare floor and walls and is overcome with emotion. And we remember right in that instant that this very bedroom, back in 1995, is where we as moviegoers first met Woody the cowboy (Tom Hanks), Space Ranger Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), and all their joyfully neurotic toy friends; but also where we first met the animation company Pixar, and the whole concept of a fully-digital animated film.
For a long time, Toy Story was the only world Pixar re-visited, the only movie in its acclaimed roster to get a sequel. That is about to change, with the likes of Cars and Monsters, Inc. now set for the franchise treatment. Andy’s departure as a grown-up young man could truly mark the end of the first generation of Pixar – no longer a rambunctious start-up but the industry’s dominant creative and financial institution.
Their latest film finds them re-trenching on safe ground after more daring spectacles like WALL*E and Up. For much of its running time it is charming, it is imaginative, and it is beautifully rendered by the artists, who take full advantage of the resources purchased by 15 years’ success without violating the aesthetics established by the episodes made in more primitive times. We meet new toys, and enjoy some fast-paced laughs and thrills. But it feels mostly like a succession of gags and adventures featuring characters we already love rather than anything urgent or fresh. It’s only in its ending that Toy Story 3 becomes a very good story, and I will talk more about that in a moment.
As it opens, Andy’s mother (Laurie Metcalf) is insistently broaching the uncomfortable topic of what to do with his toys. Few of them remain, and they have lain unused in his toybox for many years. Woody, devoted Woody, believes that, as Andy’s toys, their mission is to always be there for him should he ever want to play with them again, and if that means a life in the attic with the Christmas decorations, so be it.
But a series of mishaps both drives a wedge between Woody and the other toys, and sees them inadvertently donated to the Sunny Side Day Care Center. To Buzz, Jessie (Joan Cusack), Bullseye, Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head (Don Rickles and Estelle Harris), Rex (Wallace Shawn), Hamm (John Ratzenberger), and Slinky Dog (veteran character actor Blake Clark, subbing for his late friend Jim Varney), it has the look of a toy’s paradise – endless play with an eternally-renewing supply of children. A Barbie Doll belonging to Andy’s little sister Molly (and voiced by The Little Mermaid herself, Jodi Benson) has arrived with them, and at last meets a Ken (Michael Keaton). Sparks fly at Ken’s Dream House.
Of course there is much more to Sunny Side and its folksy alpha toy, the plush Lotso Huggin’ Bear (Ned Beatty), and soon pleasures give way to toy-scaled terrors. I am not sure which Sunny Side denizen is creepier – the baby doll enforcer with the droopy eye, or that cymbal-clanging monkey in the security room. And so our heroes, with Woody’s help, scheme an escape that involves such inspirations as exploiting Ken’s wardrobe fetish and (you must see to understand) bringing a tortilla to life. Buzz, as he often does, finds himself in personality conflict.
Things turn far more perilous than you might guess – by the end these toys are facing real literal death, and doing it with an amazing kind of courage. The makers of Toy Story 3 have not forgotten that we bond with these characters through their suffering. Even its villain is seen as not born bad, but as someone who was wounded deeply by a misfortune that could befall any toy, and nursed his anger about it until it changed him.
Toy Story 3 is enjoying incredible success right now in a disappointing summer at the multiplex, and I am sure there will be immense pressure to capitalize on the possibilities for future sequels inherent in its emotional ending. I believe that the ending is rather extraordinary, but only if you see it as the true conclusion of the story.
Here is why: this has always been the story of Woody, and his attempt to pierce the mystery of the life of a toy – like so many he strives to understand how best to fulfill the purpose of his existence. First he helped to teach Buzz, as they went from rivals to best friends and Buzz discovered he was not a real Space Ranger, about the virtue in inspiring the imaginations of children, and starring in their play. Then, in the even more provocative and moving second film, he was essentially forced to acknowledge his own mortality – and chose the finite joy of being Andy’s plaything, knowing at any time he could be abandoned or forgotten or destroyed, over immortality as an ever-preserved but never-touched exhibit in a toy museum.
This third film shows the bill from that choice coming due, and the screenplay, by Oscar-winner Michael Arndt (writer of Little Miss Sunshine), achieves poignant release because it once again finds Woody making a devastating choice, one only he can make. How could you produce a Toy Story 4 after this? Toy Story 3 shows Woody achieving true enlightenment within the toy philosophy – and with no lessons left that need learning, we should respect his maturity by letting him go. We’ll always have that bedroom.
P.S.: While the feature Toy Story 3 might not represent a risk on the part of Pixar, it is preceded by an animated short, Day & Night (directed by Teddy Newton), which is ecstatically radical. It is more of an experience than a plot, personifying and contrasting the sounds and rhythms and activities of light and dark on Earth in a way that is so conceptually tricky yet dumbfoundingly simple that I will leave you to be astounded by it for yourself. I saw it in an audience of children who were captivated into silence – they understood immediately. It carries a beautiful message of understanding and embracing that which is not like us, and as a final means of underlying its point, does so by marrying Pixar’s trademark 3D brilliance with…old-fashioned 2-D hand-drawn art. An absolute triumph.