Toy Story 3

This movie was brilliant, but it came about five years or so too late for me to really get excited about it and love it as much as it deserved. Toy Story 2 came out ten yeas ago, so by the time Pixar finally finished and released this final (?) installment in the trilogy, a little too much time had gone by for me to have the kind of emotional connection I used to feel for the characters, nor did saying goodbye to the characters strike as emotional a chord as it would've had I seen the previous two films more recently. But as a movie, it was absolutely phenomenal.

I'm not going to say a whole lot about this film because they are all more or less the same movie, and if you've seen the first two, you already know if you'll see and enjoy this one. It had the best animation of the three films -- obviously -- and some of the funniest lines, but I still preferred the second Toy Story film because its store was just more epic and scope, and because it was such a huge leap over the first film. But if somebody wanted to say this was the best Toy Story film ever, well, I wouldn't disagree with them. As I said about, it was brilliant. And it was also and ending, not to give anything away, so the entire film just wrapped up so wonderfully and emotionally, that it would be hard to imagine anybody not walking away satisfied. In fact, I can't even imagine anybody could sit through it without crying at least once, though I'm pretty sure I teared up multiple times throughout.

Not to spoil anything, but the scene at the end where the toys all hold hands and resign themselves to their fate at the end of the incinerator was absolutely amazing. You rarely scenes that like in any film, let alone in something that is ostensibly supposed to be a kid's film. But I think the scene that really hit me even more was when we learned about the backstory that made Lotso the way he was. If you can make it through either of those scenes without shedding a tear, well, you must be as cold and heartless as Lots-O'-Huggin'-Bear himself.

But the film elicited just as many laughs as it did tears. My favorite character by far was Michael Keaton's amazing portrayal of the Ken doll. He may have been my favorite character in the entire trilogy, and the scene where he put on a fashion show for Barbie was one of the funnies things I've ever seen in any movie. I didn't feel that it was as action packed as the second Toy Story film, but it was just as funny, and maybe had a little more of an emotional wallop. Anyway... just go see it.

Two thumbs up.