Academic

If you were waiting for my review of Toy Story 3, then you just wasted your weekend and need to run to your local cineplex now.  This one is for the record books.  Who cares if you cried when Old Yeller died -- did you tear up at the end of Toy Story 3?  If not, then you have no heart.

First, an admission.  We are a Toy Story family.  I am not sure how the Disney merchandising machine kept Woody and Buzz alive for the eleven years between the last two movies, but my boys love these movies like someone else in our house loves Star Wars.  Even though no TS movies were released since my boys have been born, they have never been without a Toy Story movie, book, toy, swimsuit, suitcase, plate, cup, bowl, bicycle, sweatshirt, etc.  Disney kept churning out these items as if Woody and Buzz were Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, so in the canon of animation that they don't need to make movies any more.  For awhile when Luke was a toddler, Disney ran a half-hour show called "Buzz Lightyear of Star Command," but it's not even on anymore.  So, we have waited anxiously for the third movie.  In November, Will's first movie was a double-feature of Toy Story and Toy Story 2, a teaser designed to get us all ready for the third installment, similar to the 1997 re-releases of Episodes IV, V and VI in anticipation of 1999'sThe Phantom Menace.  But thankfully, Toy Story 3 is no Phantom Menace.

So, why is Toy Story 3 so great?  For the same reasons any movie is great:  it's funny, it has a great plot, the ending is unexpected, and you love the characters and understand their motivations.  I have also had ample opportunity to watch the other 2 movies with the directors' voiceovers (my 8 year-old loves this).  The secrets of Toy Story are all of those elements, plus toys that the audience recognizes, including some of the toys from adults' youths, the age-old tension between staying young and growing up, and "deluded Buzz."  Interestingly, the makers of Toy Story realized that enlightened Buzz isn't that funny.  He was funny in the first movie when he hadn't realized he was a toy, but after that he was just a straight man.  So, in both the second and third movies, they had to make a way to bring back "deluded Buzz."  The third movie's version of this is hilarious, and so we have Spanish-version Buzz.  The movie also tips its hat to all the loyal TS fans who have the other two movies memorized:  the intro bit is almost word for word from similar playtimes in the other two movies (force-field dog, dinosaur who eats force-field dogs, evil Dr. Porkchop, death by monkeys).

Finally, the movie is great on both the child and adult level, but not by Shrek-like in-jokes or double-entendres.  The basic plot is that Andy is going away to college, and must choose to put his toys in the garbage, in the attic or take them to college.  Andy picks Woody to take to college, and the others will go to the attic.  Through a mix-up, the other toys think they are being taken to the garbage so stow away in a donation box to the local daycare.  Unfortunately, the seemingly-Shangri-La-like daycare is more like the Hotel California.  An evil strawberry-smelling Care Bear clone (I guess the Care Bear people didn't want to be the antagonist here) rules over the daycare toys as if they were prison inmates.  The evil Lotso puts our beloved Andy's Room toys in the toddler room where he knows they will be ravaged and eventually thrown out.  Woody has to risk missing the move to college to rescue them.  On one level, the movie is about the toys being trapped in a daycare, a situation that may seem familiar to many kids, including my own!  But on another level, the movie is about the empty-nest syndrome and the void created when kids leave home.  How do you let your kids go when, in the words of Andy's mom, you want to be with them all the time?  Once they go, what do you do?  Do you hang around in the attic, playing with the Christmas decorations until grandkids appear?  Do you try a different adventure, even though what you really want to do is just turn back time and have the old adventure one more time?

Our theater was filled with kids of all ages, and everyone laughed and cried.  Remember to stay after the credits -- some of the best parts of the movies are in the extra scenes as the credits roll.  It's a great movie, with a great ending.  We had only one question when we left, besides "When can we see it again?"   Why was the Spanish-language translation of "You've Got a Friend in Me" "Hay un Amigo en Mi"  Why wasn't "Tienes un Amigo en Mi" the obvious choice there?  Oh, well.  Catchy either way.