Review: Toy Story 3 (2010)

I've probably told this story here before, but in the context of this review, it bears repeating:

When I was about 15, my mother decided that my toys should be donated to the family next door, which had several children and little money for toys. To this day, Mom maintains that I went along with this plan willingly. To this day, I maintain that I did not.

Maybe that was selfish of me. Maybe I should have recognized that I was too old to be playing with G.I. Joe or Mego Spider-Man and willingly handed them over to kids who had far less than I did, even though my family was far from affluent.

Still, the memory of that moment--and my subsequent extensive interest in collecting action figures in general, and replacements for the toys that Mom had given away that day in particular--made me fear Toy Story 3.

It's not that I expected a bad movie. Quite the contrary--the folks at Pixar rarely let me down, and I loved the first two Toy Story movies. But this one, with its story of the plaything of youth being given away because their longtime owner, Andy, is headed off to college and is way too old to be romping around his dorm room with Buzz Lightyear, Rex or Slinky Dog (only the ever-loyal Woody makes the cut to accompany Andy to campus), seemed designed to make me cry.

The rest of the toys are pitched in a trash bag and designated for the attic, but Andy's mom mistakes the trash bag for, well, trash and pitches them to the curb. Woody takes off after them, and everybody (including all of the aforementioned, plus Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, Jessie, Bullseye, Barbie, Hamm and those weird little alien dudes) winds up being donated to a daycare center, where the toy in charge--a strawberry-scented, seemingly benevolent plush bear named Lotso Huggin'--assures the new arrivals that they'll be played with in their new home.

Woody, however, is determined to get back to Andy and makes his way out of the daycare center, only to wind up in the backpack of a sweet little girl named Bonnie and added to her collection of toys, including an Internet-savvy triceratops named Trixie, a husky-voiced unicorn, a hedgehog who thinks he's performing Shakespeare and a dolly named, well, Dolly. Woody still wants to get back to Andy before his owner heads off to college, but when his new toy friends tell him all is not as it appears at the daycare center, Woody has to decide: Stay with his new friends? rescue his old pals? Or give up what may be his last shot at being loved by the child who's loved him for so long?

This may sound like grim material--and, at times, it is--but there are lots of laughs and thrills along the way, as well as messages regarding loyalty to one's friends and knowing when, as painful as it might be, letting go is the best, healthiest thing to do.

So, was I right to fear Toy Story 3? Did it make me cry? Sure did. I was hardly alone, though--when the lights came up, more than a few theater patrons were using their popcorn napkins to dab away tears. Whether that was caused dredged-up memories, top-notch, emotionally charged filmmaking or, most likely, a combination of the two, only the individual filmgoers could say.