When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became an adult, 1 I set aside childish ways.
I love the Toy Story movies. The first set the standard for Pixar greatness, showing that you can make movies to appeal to children, yet you can create stories and characters that do this with depth, gravitas, humor and elements that appeal to adults and their life experiences as well. For what we experience as children is crucial in building who we are and what we take with us in life's journey as adults. Pixar's films recognize the validity and richness of the life journey and have no problem putting in all sorts of indicators to that affect. One of the things that the Toy Story films have no problem acknowledging is that as fun and as carefree as a child's life can and should be, it has it's sorrows and has it's pains as well. Those events are just as crucial in informing who we become later as anything. In fact, a life without pain, without strife, I contend would create incomplete human beings. We need our pains and sorrows. For only with the sour, is the sweet just as sweet (cribbing from Vanilla Sky right there).
Toy Story 1 was about the childhood experience itself and coping with challenges and newness that enter life, learning to incorporate it. Toy Story 2 was about the realization that nothing lasts forever and dealing with that knowledge. Toy Story 3 was about passings and endings and new phases and recognizing that even in endings, something survives and can be passed on.
This is the scenario. Andy, the owner of Sheriff Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), and the gang have noticed that Andy doesn't play with them nearly as much as he used to. The imaginative adventures he used to construct with them have fallen by the wayside as he has gotten older and discovered other things. They miss playtime, but have been sanguine about the whole thing until one day, they find out Andy is leaving to go to college. His mother tells him he's got to do something with his toys. So...Andy seems to decide that he's taking Woody with him to college, presumably to decorate his dorm room. The rest of the gang get put in a trash bag. They panic, thinking they are about to be thrown out. But Andy just intends to leave the rest of them in the attic. They aren't thrilled by this, but at least Andy doesn't want to be rid of them...until Andy's Mom comes by and finds the trash bag on the floor. Thinking it's refuse, she takes the bag out to the curb. The toys freak, especially when they hear the garbage truck coming. Woody attempts a rescue, trying to explain to the scared and hurt toys that Andy intended to put them in the attic. They manage to get out, but end up in the back of the family car, with a box full of toys from Andy's sister intended to be donated to a day care center. All the time, Woody tries encouraging them to attempt to return to Andy's house, but the others feel jilted. But when greeted by a crowd of friendly seeming toys, led by Lotso, a big fluffy Teddy Bear (voiced by Otis himself, Ned Beatty), and are seduced by the idea of being played with ad infinitum by masses of adoring kids, they feel comforted by their accomodations.
But Woody is not content with this, and is determined to return to Andy. In the ensuing adventures, you see that the life of a toy at a day care center may not be all appreciative play. That there may be more sinister/misguided intentions at work. And even when someone dear in your life has to move on, that doesn't mean that it's all over. Thus, we are set up...
Toy Story 3 is about such transitions, but when the old thing passes away and finding the new thing, whatever it is, that awaits on the other side. And that is the incredible thing about Toy Story 3. And really, again, it has to be said, Pixar's approach to storytelling. It creates a fanciful scenario, but it is always ground in something recognizable about life. The anxiety experienced by Woody and his fellows, very human. The pain of being abandoned, of feeling heartbreak at seemingly no longer being wanted, we all have something in our lives which can cause us to relate. The movie also acknowledges that this, though painful, is temporary. If you hang on, there is another side...and it may even be better and richer, made all the more so due to your trevails.
Lots of toy jokes, as always, await the viewer familiar with toy history. Barbie (Jodie Benson) appears in this series for the first time, as does Ken, voiced by Michael Keaton, who is clearly having a grand time with it. Also, the monkey with the cymbals? Look for him doing a career in security.
Also, again, it seems that every one of these films has depicted an experience of these toys that I personally relate to. From the first film, the idea that toys, when not being played with, engage in their own lives, I believed that as a child. And from this film...when I was a kid, a wee lad, my family moved from Florida to Arkansas. We stopped at a rest stop. I had my favorite bear with me, a worn Pooh bear I called Bobo. When we resumed our journey, I noticed Bobo wasn't with us. It was way too late to go back. And even to this day, as sappy as it sounds, I think back on that, and the fanciful side of me wonders what Bobo was thinking and feeling as he saw our vehicles drive away. Part of me hopes another family found him and took good care of him.
They show a similar scenario in this film. And it makes me wonder at just how many other people have a memory like this involving their toys.
The human side of being a toy, Pixar has their game down cold, and once again take you on an emotional and fanciful journey that is just as real as any adult drama you can think of.
Childhood does end. And life demands transitions. But the despair of the moment gives way to the peace of the new place. Just as it is for the toys of Toy Story 3, it is and will be for us all.
Go see this movie.
