I can count on one hand the amount of toys I had as a kid that I still own. And I won't need any fingers on that hand, either.
I can even use the Toy Story series as markings of their loss. I wasn't much older than Andy when the first Toy Story came out. I've grown up, as Andy has. I'm a different person now, and so is Andy. Our views on toys have likely changed, as well. I suspect the sharp people at Pixar know this. Not of me specifically, but of those in my age group who have also abandoned our toys in the time passed between the first and third Toy Stories.
Toy Story 3, as good as it is as a piece of entertainment, is hard to justify the existence of. Everything about it seems to be a slight against making it; from the forcible way Pixar had to wrangle the film away from Disney's now-defunct in-house 3-D animation department, to the 11 year gap since the last movie, and of course the perfect wrap-up of the second movie that really left no stones unturned as to where the relationship between Andy and his toys could and would go. The premise of Toy Story 3—Andy growing up and no longer playing with toys—was already brought up and dealt with in the second movie. So how do you justify basing an entire movie out of a resolved issue?
At times, the film manages to add some new spin to the discussion of the child-toy relationship, but mostly, it doesn't find new grounds to explore. It being a Toy Story, tradition demands a daring rescue dominating the mid-section. The trick is that these rescue missions reflect the core strifes of the characters. In Toy Story, rescuing Buzz from being left behind in a move is essentially an acceptance of the inevitable arrivals of newer toys. In Toy Story 2, rescuing Woody from being shipped to a museum in Japan provides the argument of a toy's value, whether it should be purely monetary or irrationally emotional. Toy Story 3's plot is a bit tougher to crack, because the daring rescue—this time Woody busting his accidentally donated friends out of a daycare gulag ruled under the plush iron fist of a tyrannical teddy bear—feels so far removed from the set-up of Andy leaving for college.
Near the beginning of the film, as the toys face the anxiety of not being played with anymore by the now teenage Andy, Woody assures them that it's normal (again, because they've already accepted this day as inevitable in Toy Story 2) and edifies that maybe one day Andy will have kids of his own and pass his toys along to them. Without spoiling the particulars of what happens, the conclusion of the story is approximately that, and there we have it verbally communicated to us 10 minutes in. There's no internal conflict with the toys this time around. They're all pretty convinced that they're still wanted early in the story, and a big chunk of the movie is just a filler adventure, waiting for that ending where Andy's departure will come into play again.
Even the villain is oddly redundant. Lotso the teddy bear shares Stinky Pete from Toy Story 2's existential cynicism. Both realize that basing their existence on making a child happy would not be beneficial to themselves in the long run, and it is better to find a home that would provide endless appreciation. For Stinky Pete, it was the longevity of being in a collection. For Lotso, it's a daycare center's promise of rotating kids.
While the assembly of the film leads to a flawed product, it's hard to argue that the parts are not manufactured perfectly. The technical precision, down to the remarkably subtle use of 3-D, is something that Pixar comes across as comfortable with and reliable on. For all that I said on the apparent vacuousness of the story, there are moments of genius that these guys laid out like the pros that they are, knowing just how to present a heart-tug scene for optimum performance.
There's one in particular that will forever haunt the picture of these characters in my head. After dancing around the fear of becoming trash, the toys face the true meaning of what that entails in a characteristically mature moment that takes place in a junkyard incinerator. Their reaction and subsequent acceptance of this fate is marvelously devastating, so much so that I wish the movie would've explored this concept of the disposability of toys more than the prevailing theme of ownership. After all, that is the reality of it; that most kids would not be as caring as Andy and toys would end up as garbage. While that would have been a more profound and unique approach, Pixar chose to stay positive and wickedly anti-consumerism (with apologies to the Disney corporation) by encouraging the prolonging of an old toy's shelf life over the purchase of new things.
The handling of this realization, as Andy chooses the continued use of his toys over his own sense of precious nostalgia, is simultaneously graceful and painful, providing the only observation that hadn't been covered by the previous movies. Andy's best memories of Woody and Buzz are not going to change despite his ownership of them, so what's the point of holding on? The purpose of these toys is already shown in the film's opening scene where Andy imagines an epic western using his toys as the characters. Nurturing imagination, something the folks at Pixar pride themselves at.
The toys I had as a child are now just memories that occasionally creep back in when conversations remind me of them. I've grown less and less attached to my possessions as I've gotten older, including toys. The stories I used to conjure up with them, however, I know are still with me, regardless of how consciously I remember them.
I look at the toys I have now (because being in your twenties does not mean you can't decorate your apartment with action figures) and I know I probably won't hold on to them for another decade. When the time comes, I doubt I'd be as sentimental as Andy is towards Woody, Buzz and the gang. I'm not Andy, but what Toy Story 3 accomplishes, and this is a good thing, is leaving me with the hope that the world has more of him and less of me.
"Toy Story 3" opens June 18, 2010 and is rated G. Animation, Children & Family. Directed by Lee Unkrich. Written by Michael Arndt (screenplay), John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich (story). Starring Don Rickles, Joan Cusack, John Ratzenberger, Michael Keaton, Ned Beatty, Tim Allen, Tom Hanks, Wallace Shawn, Estelle Harris.
