I don’t know why, but I always forget just how meaty Pixar can be when they hit their stride. If the average Disney film is a pack of sausages, then Pixar's better films - The Incredibles, Wall.E, Up - are roast chicken dinners. Compared to the damp McDonalds vegeburgers that make up the rest of the current crop of 3D CG animations, Toy Story 3 is a 12-course dinner where every course is made up of a fat Angus steak wrapped in bacon and drenched in beef gravy, delivered to you by a sumo wrestler wrapped in veal.
Of course, Toy Story has never been a series for children – not really. I always felt that children were a bit short-changed by the series, because they probably wouldn’t get any of the really good jokes. The feeling goes triple for Toy Story 3, which contains references to Dali, homosexuality and Star Wars and which has a whole sequence with Buzz Lightyear speaking in subtitled Spanish. The central baddie is a big pink bear that smells of strawberries, guarded by the scariest baby doll since Child's Play. This film isn’t for kids.
Which is appropriate, because the child in the film, Andy, isn’t a child any more. He’s 17 and about to go to college. He’s given the choice to either donate his last remaining toys to a local kindergarten or put them up in the attic. A black sack mix-up sees them all donated to the school, which at first glance looks like the toy equivalent of a retirement home. Most of the toys welcome this: after all, they haven’t had any attention from Andy in years. And, hey, look at all the children to play with!
At this point, the film switches genres, moving into an area somewhere between tense thriller and out-and-out horror. The children are destructive forces of nature, and the school toys operate on a caste system that sacrifices the weak to protect the strong from inevitable chewy death.
There is a prison scene about halfway through the film that makes Schindler’s List look like a romantic comedy.
Later in the film, and I promise I’m not making this up, we get a sniff of Dante’s Inferno, as the toys face a literal trial by fire. The denouement puts the audience on an emotional rollercoaster, and the closing moments of the film will make even the most cynical souls well up – especially if they’ve been with the series since the beginning. If I was any less manly, I would have openly wept.
The series started all the way back in 1995, and it’s been 11 years since Toy Story 2 was released - although, like all good nostalgia, it feels like only yesterday. Like Andy, the series has grown up with us, and this film creates a perfect ending to a near-perfect trilogy. It is funny, charming, scary, exhilarating and moving, often all at the same time.
The film is available to watch in 3D as well as normal-o-vision, although frankly (as with Pixar’s Up) the 3D is subtle, and the best thing you can say about it is that it doesn’t detract from the action. As with all other Pixar films, Toy Story 3 is preceded by a short film: Night & Day, which is a surreally philosophical and frighteningly clever piece that works on a number of different levels.
Toy Story 3 is one of those films that makes going to the cinema worthwhile. Before the film, we sat through trailers for the Cats & Dogs sequel, Shrek 4, Alpha and Omega and Despicable Me, and I had to wonder why any of those other filmmakers even bothered: they might now be able to animate up to Pixar’s standard (apart from Alpha and Omega, which looks like it was designed by an idiot), but they’ve got nothing on Pixar’s ability to tell a story.
Then again, all those other films are written for kids.