REVIEW: Toy Story 3

Toy Story 3 (2010): Dir. Lee Unkrich. Written by Michael Arndt. Featuring the voices of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Ned Beatty, Don Rickles, and Michael Keaton. Rated G. Running time: 103 minutes.

3 ½ stars (out of four)

We all outgrow our toys eventually, but the wonderful thing about great films, and this is especially true of great children’s films, is that they grow with us. I was 6 years old when the first Toy Story came out and 10 when I saw the second in theaters, and in revisiting the films I found they’ve not only lost none of their charm, but in fact resonate with me more than ever. Toy Story 3, arriving nearly 11 years after the first sequel, is the most sophisticated of the series, in both its animation and its message, ending the series on a poignant and wholly satisfying note.

Toy Story 3 finds Woody and Co. in a dark place – and not just in the literal sense of their placement in the forgotten toy box. Toy population in Andy’s room has shrunk after years of yard sales and garbage days, leaving only a handful of sentimental favorites left – both an economical decision by the filmmakers to not overcrowd the film with unnecessary side characters and also a heartbreaking reminder of the toys’ impermanence. As Andy packs for college, he must decide whether to hold on to these mementos of his childhood, donate them to a local daycare or forsake them to the dump. Andy, the sentimentalist he is, elects to store them in the attic with the exception of Woody, who gets an honored placement in the college box. When Andy’s mother mistakenly brings them out to the curb – a reasonable misunderstanding considering Andy packs them in a black garbage bag – the toys decide they’d rather be donated than trashed and they hitch a ride to the Sunnyside Daycare Center.

Sunnyside, in typical Pixar inventiveness, is an exciting new world filled with vibrant colors and the promise of being played with by children all day long. It seems to them Toy Heaven, an eternal life of playtime. When children grow up at Sunnyside, explains a stuffed bear and leader of Sunnyside named Lots-O’-Huggin’-Bear (Lotso for short), a new generation of kids replaces them. You’ll never need to feel the heartbreak of your owner outgrowing you because there will always be another child ready to play with you.

Woody, who has accompanied his friends this far, refuses the invitation to this seeming utopia and, in spite of his friends’ behest, embarks on a journey back to Andy’s. His failed escape, another of the thrilling toy’s-eye-view action sequences we’ve come to expect from the series, ends when a little girl, Bonnie, snatches him off the ground and brings him home. Bonnie’s room proves to be another temptation for Woody, a place where he can get all the loving, one-on-one playtime he no longer receives from Andy.

Woody’s dilemma is rendered temporarily moot, however, when he learns from Chuckles, a less-than-cheerful clown and Sunnyside veteran, that Lotso is in fact running a totalitarian regime under the guise of a toy’s paradise. The flashback sequence detailing Lotso’s past and the subsequent breakout plan that Woody hatches have more excitement than most contemporary crime films and serve as a reminder of why Pixar is still tops in animation. The studio crafts complex stories that don’t insult a child’s (or an adult’s for that matter) intelligence, and thrives on visual and narrative inventiveness.

And this is only the main narrative thread. The film is peppered with clever details and inspired tangents that come together nicely by the climax. Watch how the film shows Mrs. Potato’s ability to see in two places at once, after she leaves her detachable left eye in Andy’s room, or how the “men” of the Sunnyside toys gamble in their spare time. There’s also an ingenious subplot involving Barbie’s seduction by fashion of a Ken doll, a comedic highpoint of the film. There are a few recycled ideas – as an antagonist, Lotso recalls Toy Story 2’s Prospector in both his voice and cane-assisted walk, and when Buzz is set to “demo mode” it's a bit of a retread of his encounter with a fresh-off-the-shelves Lightyear model from Al’s Toy Barn – but even these familiar elements improve upon the original ideas enough that they remain fresh.

Toy Story 3 is every bit as imaginative and funny as the first two installments (without getting too joke-y, something the previous were even at their best), but has an emotional core that elevates and enriches its predecessors. The film, and the series on a whole, teaches acceptance of life’s changes and shows how this leap of faith is often rewarded with joys previously unknown. In the first film, Woody doesn’t want to accept that Andy might have found a new favorite toy in Buzz, but he ultimately forges an indelible friendship with the space ranger. In 2, Woody and the gang begin to accept that their owner will one day grow up, an acceptance that becomes fully realized in this film. This theme is echoed throughout the film and we see how Lotso’s reluctance to accept his own abandonment has corroded him.

The opening scene of Toy Story 3 recalls that of the first film, with Andy as a child acting out an imagined battle between Woody and Mr. Potato Head. But while the first film allowed us to observe a child playing with his toys, this one invites us inside his imagination and we see the action play out with all the dazzle Pixar’s animation team can afford. Andy’s experience is not one that we watch from a distance, but is in fact representative of what we all go through in our adolescence… and beyond.

The final shot, of white clouds on a blue sky, is a direct reference to the first image of Andy’s wallpaper at the start Toy Story. As Andy leaves his room and his toys for college, we realize that he is not abandoning that old room, but rather moving on to a larger arena, that of the real world. The room is a training ground, preparing Andy for life until he is ready to go out on his own. The films, now a completed story, offer us a similar training, showing the value in letting go and moving on to better things. And that’s something I’ll never get too old for.

** NOTE: I saw this film in Disney Digital 3D for an extra $3 and it added little to the film experience for me except a dimmer picture. More on 3D next week though.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/18/10

REVIEW: Get Him to the Greek

Get Him to the Greek (2010): Dir. Nicholas Stoller. Written by: Nicholas Stoller (based on characters created by Jason Segel). Starring: Russell Brand, Jonah Hill, Sean "Diddy" Combs. Rated R (strong sexual content and drug use throughout, and pervasive language). Running time: 109 minutes.

2 ½ stars (out of four)

Aldous Snow, the scene-stealing British rocker from 2008’s Judd Apatow-produced film, Forgetting Sarah Marshall (also directed by Nicholas Stoller), returns in a loose spin-off of that film that builds off comedian Russell Brand’s wonderful parody of the womanizing frontman and delves deeper – sort of – into the life of the fictional rockstar.

Get Him to the Greek finds Aldous Snow at a low-point in his career after a misguided foray in political music yields the offensive bomb of a single, “African Child (Trapped in Me).” Snow’s failure, however, provides Aaron Green, an intern for Pinnacle Records and longtime fan of Snow’s music, with an opportunity to resurrect his favorite artist’s career. Green (played by Jonah Hill) pitches the idea of a comeback concert for Snow to his boss (Sean “Diddy” Combs) so that the record label can commemorate the ten-year anniversary of Snow’s famous concert at the Greek Theatre and cash in on the CD re-releases of Snow’s back catalog. The label agrees and gives Green 72 hours to fly to London and get Snow back to L.A. for the show.

The set-up is a little forced, as though it were constructed to be neatly summarized in a 3-minute trailer – or perhaps a poster’s tagline – but once the proceedings get going, the film delivers good on its high-concept promise. As Green struggles to get Snow on time to the concert, we’re treated to a series of inspired party montages that breathe new life into sex and vomit gags… I mean that as a genuine compliment. For all its crudeness though, Get Him to the Greek also has an unfortunate reliance on sentimental sitcom-quality drama. Green’s storyline is a tired moving-away-from-home-for-his-girlfriend’s-career conflict and even rocker Aldous Snow can’t escape the film’s tendency towards trite drama. When Snow reconnects with his child near the end of the film, the tone is unclear and we’re unsure if the moment is meant to be a funny or a genuine one. Where other Apatow-produced affairs deftly blend comedy with heartfelt emotion, Get Him to the Greek isn’t as good a fit for that treatment. The film’s dramatic moments fail because Snow is too much of a caricature to show any real emotion and the cheating Green is too skeevy to muster any audience sympathy.

All these issues are rendered irrelevant, however, when the film lets Russell Brand loose in a fine comedic performance. Brand captures the air-headed rockstar persona, but his character’s insistent affection for that drug-addled lifestyle of meaningless hook-ups keeps the character an endearing nitwit and less like some of his more unlikable real-life counterparts. His confession to Green about why he continues his drug addiction (“I don’t have to worry about anything except drugs,” he says.) manages to be quite funny and maybe even a little poignant coming out of Brand’s mouth. Brand’s scenes are such breaths of fresh air, you wish the film had cut down on Jonah Hill’s character if only to give Brand more time for one-liners. Hill does fine in supporting roles (such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall), but he can’t quite hold his own when sharing the spotlight with Brand. There are some good supporting players though, such as Sean “Diddy” Combs’s quick-to-anger record label manager. Combs struggles in his first few scenes, but ultimately succeeds in his portrayal of an exaggerated music executive that stays just shy of the extreme territory tread by Tom Cruise’s Les Grossman from Tropic Thunder.

Brand’s excellent performance is complemented by a soundtrack of faux songs by Snow’s fictional band, Infant Sorrow. The songs – written by Brand, Sarah Marshall screenwriter Jason Segel, and a host of real musicians including Jarvis Cocker and Libertines-frontman Carl Barat – are skilled parodies of Killers-esque arena-rock anthems. One song, “Bangers, Beans & Mash,” is so convincing, it might be mistaken for an Oasis b-side in a different context. Another, entitled “Going Up,” features emphatically delivered lines such as, “Like a dog who’s gone insane, you’re putting me down, down down,” and “African Child” is a wonderful send-up of the rockstar-gone-political. We even get the Lady Gaga-imitation pop icon, Jackie Q, whose vulgar dance lyrics are less than subtle. Still, these songs aren’t as strong as the ingenious Dracula puppet-opera from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and they pale too in comparison to another Apatow-produced film, Walk Hard, whose songs were so well written, they almost held their own against the Johnny Cash originals they parodied.

There’s plenty of ripe material for a satire on the music industry, but Get Him to the Greek never points its gun at the fans who worship morons like Snow or the media that propagates them, preferring instead to use the extravagant rockstar lifestyle as a launching pad for raunchy comedy. More might have been done with the Snow character, but the film is an earnest comedy and you can’t fault a film for setting its sights low when it hits its target fine.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/10/10