![]() It’s like Dorothy telling the Scarecrow she’s going to miss him most of all. For a pregnant moment, he stands with Buzz (Tim Allen) and Woody poised over his college-bound suitcase before he finally drops Woody in and consigns Buzz to the plastic bag with the rest of the gang. His mother (Laurie Metcalf) wants Andy’s room cleaned out his covetous sister (Beatrice Miller) would like Andy gone, too, and quickly, so she can annex his bedroom. ![]() The crisis? Andy (John Morris) is going off to college, and his toys are going-well, that’s the thing. What will unnerve their parents even more, though, is the existential dread that underscores the entire movie. One would not know it from the trailers, but the ending of this latest film contains a vision of eternal damnation that will be positively hair-raising, particularly for smaller children. What’s curious this time around is the edginess of the story. These sequences have gotten wilder and more virtuosic over the course of the series, and the “TS3” sequences are the best yet, at least in terms of choreography and wit. Like the characters, we know the basic structure of the “Toy Story” movies: They begin with a fantasy conjured in Andy’s head as he plays with his beloved toys they end with a chase-and-rescue executed by the toys themselves. Buzz Lightyear’s egomania (batteries not included) is a reliable source of fun the Potato Heads are constantly bickering Rex the dinosaur is paralyzed by neuroses Slinky Dog is leashed to an inferior intellect. Woody’s precarious dominance over the playroom is a constant source of tension and something he blusters his way through. They also may have been springy and plastic, but hey-nobody’s perfect.Īnd imperfection was, and is, what makes the “TS” characters who they are, and the movies what they are. They could have been a 4-H Club, a ladies’ sodality, a group of mah-jong players in San Francisco or a B’nai B’rith chapter in New York City. The photo-realist visuals may have been both new and dumbfounding (how are they doing that?), but the film was also an immersion in the familiar: We knew the toys, we knew the conflicts (personal dynamics, ego, loss, purpose), and we certainly knew the characters. But, of course, humanity is what it was all about. “Toy Story,” the first entirely computerized animated feature, signified a victory for cutting-edge entertainment technology and made it, in a sense, anti-human. It seems like the culmination of all that preceded it in the franchise/series that started the Pixar coffers chiming with glee back in 1995. That film, “Toy Story 3,” may not mark the end of the trail for Woody the Cowboy (Tom Hanks) and the posse at Andy’s Playroom. There may have been a minor misstep or two over the course of its history (“Cars”-maybe), but this Disney-owned, CGI-animation wonderland has largely been busy producing one mini-masterpiece after another-“The Incredibles,” “Monsters Inc.,” “Finding Nemo” and the sublime “WALL-E.” The studio has won 24 Oscars. At a time when every soulless movie multiplex might well have “Abandon all hope…” emblazoned over its portals, Pixar has represented a source of consistent joy. ![]()
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