I remembered myself fifteen years ago, when the first Toy Story was released. I was also five, playing with my collection of Toy Story characters to make dozens of sequels. That photo combined with a predictable level of homesickness while I’m abroad made me resolve to do two things as soon as possible: visit my nephews and see Toy Story 3. The first must wait at least until we’re in the same country, but the latter I have just accomplished.
In a timeline just a few years off from my own, Toy Story 3 begins with Andy going to college. He’s long outgrown his toys, which are either going into storage in the attic or being donated. By accident they end up at Sunnyside Day Care Center, where a tyrannical bear imprisons them. Even if they escape, they have to find Andy, and who’s to say he still wants them?
Toy Story’s production studio, PIXAR, is undoubtedly the most successful and reliable production company of the last fifteen years. They’ve never made a bad or unsuccessful movie, and their competitors in computer-animated children’s entertainment have always been too desperate for laughs and entirely incapable of PIXAR’s tenderness.
Even so, PIXAR’s sure-handed quality control process includes a reliance on several clichés. The protagonists are trapped and need to escape. A mentor character turns out to be evil because he was betrayed earlier in life. Toy Story 3 falls into both of these, and the first two-thirds of the film suffer as a result. One can feel the writers--and audience members over seven--checking off boxes and filling in the spaces as the toys plan their escape from Sunnyside and its evil teddy tyrant. There’s also a diversion with Barbie and Ken that feels forced and annoying (Who would have imagined Michael Keaton would produce a bland voice performance?)
But PIXAR’s advantage has always been individual scenes of complex emotion and sublime humanity. Buzz Lightyear discovering he can’t fly. Sully saying goodbye to Boo. Dory begging Marlin not to leave. The montage of Carl and Ellie’s life together. These moments of movie magic are embedded in otherwise satisfactory narratives, but they alone are worth the
Toy Story 3 saves these moments for the third act, and then delivers beautifully. In a moment of surprising maturity and intensity, the toys brace for and accept certain death. In another, Woody’s friendship with Buzz is paralleled with Andy’s mother saying goodbye to her son. Andy finally leaving his toys is a cathartic metaphor for anyone who is separated from someone they loved or grew up with.
What’s interesting about family films is their focus on our less outward, but deeper emotions about best friends, siblings, parents, and children. A children’s film turns out to be a perfect medium for introducing ideas about growing up, one‘s purpose in life, the death of loved ones, and even the death of one’s self. Consider the significance of Bambi and Dumbo in many children‘s development, the latter having maintained its popularity despite poor storytelling and anachronistic social values. It probably won’t be as iconic in history, but upon my first viewing I think Toy Story 3’s final act may deserve a place somewhere close to the first half of The Lion King in terms of rousing complex emotions in a way children can appreciate.
In the concluding scenes I thought of my own family and my own life. Whenever my mind gets autobiographical and reflective during a film, I accept that the filmmakers have defeated my coldness and my skepticism (Cinema Paradiso and Au Hasard Balthasar might be the best examples). It doesn’t mean the film as a whole is masterful, but it’s an example of why people have always used and enjoyed art.
When Andy gives his toys to a new little girl, and I think of my nephew playing the same way I did fifteen years ago, as Jake LaMotta says in Raging Bull, "That's entertainment."
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