'Toy Story 3': Pixar's 'Toy Story' movies keep getting better and better
'Toy Story 3' is even better than its predecessors!
'Toy Story 3' scene: From left, Jessie, voiced by Joan Cusack, Buzz Lightyear, voiced by Tim Allen and Woody, voiced by Tom Hanks are shown.
Disney Pixar/AP
Pixar’s “Toy Story” movies just keep getting better. The latest, and I hope not last installment, “Toy Story 3,” has more emotional power than either of its predecessors. Come to think of it, it also has more emotional power than most of the live-action movies out there.
Expertly mounted in 3-D, the movie begins with the 6-year-old Andy’s toycentric imaginings, complete with thrill-ride-type pyrotechnics for his favorites, including homespun cowboy Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks), comically stalwart Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), and the rest.
What makes this sequence so thrillingly comical is that it parodies the Jerry Bruckheimer-Joel Silver school of blam-pow filmmaking even as it tops its effects. It’s also a marvelous demonstration of how movies can inspire kids to create entire fantasy worlds. (The “Toy Story” films certainly serve that function.)
But the pyrotechnics turn out to be a prequel to the central story. Andy, now 18, is college-bound. Excepting Woody, he packs up his toys for the attic, but his mother mistakes the bag for trash. This sets in motion a series of events that lands the lot, including Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head (Don Rickles and Estelle Harris) and Jessie (Joan Cusack), inside the precincts of the suspiciously cheery Sunnyside Day-care Center.
Looking forward to a lifetime of playtime with an inexhaustible supply of tots, Andy’s toys soon realize, to their horror, that Sunnyside, presided over by a strawberry-scented plush named Lots-o-Huggin’ Bear (Ned Beatty), is no refuge: It’s more like a prison. Woody, initially smuggled into Sunnyside with his friends, must ride to the rescue, as “Toy Story 3,” which began as a riff on hypercharged action movies, turns into a jailbreak escapade – and a surprisingly effective one, too.
