Year: 2010
Accolades: Critically Acclaimed, Essential Animation; Also Won a Lot of Awards
Review on Letterboxd: 'Toy Story 3 review by Avalanche
The first two films in this trilogy involved, in some way, one of the toys getting lost and therefore needing to be rescued so that they can all go and get played with by Andy. This time, with Andy all grown up and about to head off to college, all the toys end up in a day-care centre, which all but Woody seem to think is for the best. Not all is as it seems at the centre, so cue another daring escape back to Andy's place.
The Toy Story films have always been a sure-fire hit, and Toy Story 3 is no different. Like its predecessors, it's full of charm, humour, action, and emotion. There's actually something a little bittersweet about watching this film. It feels like it belongs in a different era. It harks back to a time when the film industry wasn't so obsessed with churning out so many sequels and remakes that the market felt flooded by them. The Toy Story franchise comes from a time when a sequel felt rarer (even if perhaps it wasn't) and was made because it had a good story behind it.
And that's a good thing, in the case of this film. Some of the emotion relies on the fact that the film feels like it belongs back in that era. The toys themselves still feel like they should be getting played with by a boy whose just not quite a teenager yet. The entire premise of the film relies on these ideas.
I once heard a theory (I can't remember where) that the film wasn't made just for the kids, but also for the people who grew up with the first two films. I think that's not a bad theory at all, if not an actual intention on the part of the film-makers. This is a film about moving on, and had the film been poorly written it wouldn't have allowed us to do that. It's not a perfect film, but moving on is never easy. Luckily, despite some nit-picky style flaws, the gang get the send-off they deserve.
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