The Neverending Story

Buzz and Woody animate once again as Pixar revisits well-trodden terrain in Toy Story 3.

by Sam Adams

OUR GANG: Andy's toys refuse to be relegated to the attic and attempt a daring escape to a daycare center — but they get more than they bargained for.

[CITY PAPER GRADE:  B+ ]

Essentially extending the loss-of-childhood montage from its predecessor to feature length, Toy Story 3 finds Woody the cowboy (voiced by Tom Hanks), galactic superhero Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and the rest of the gang abandoned by their once-faithful Andy, who is counting down the few days left before he goes to college. Although Andy means to put them in the attic, preserving the possibility of a fleeting return to childhood, the toys fear being left by the curb, so they dispatch themselves to the nearest day-care center. Here, it's the childish things that put themselves away.

With rooms full of tots and rainbow-bedecked doors, Sunnyside seems like happy hunting grounds for disused playthings, where they can be perpetually new to unending generations of youngsters. But as they swiftly find out, the age of attachment has a beginning as well as an end; the toddlers who lay hands on them aren't interested in playing with toys so much as testing their limits. Can a dinosaur also be a hammer? What does a spaceman's head taste like?

In other words, Toy Story 3 is not just about regaining children's love, but fearing it, as well. In the right hands, the toys come alive, as in the fantastic sequence that opens the film, a mixed-genre action sequence that mashes up the Wild West and outer space. (Tellingly, the sequence turns out to be part of an old, blurry VHS tape of a much younger Andy.) The younger children at the day care don't know how to love without destroying.

It emerges that Andy's former toys are being used as cannon fodder by the day-care center's older and more calculating inhabitants, a shadowy cabal led by a nappy pink teddy bear named Lotso (Ned Beatty, channeling his craven executive from Network). Lotso's allies enjoy a less bruising form of love from the older children, a coveted perk they don't share easily.

There's intriguing material, although perhaps not quite enough to justify another return to the same milieu. Too many of Toy Story 3's elements feel like slightly modified versions of the first two films, as when Lotso uses a hidden switch to make Buzz revert to his factory-programmed personality. As always, the visual textures and the attention to detail are dazzling, lending the toys a degree of sentience without compromising the limitations of their plastic forms. It's a pleasure to revisit the old terrain, but ultimately even toys can't go home again.

(sam@citypaper.net)

Toy Story 3 | Directed by Lee Unkrich, A Pixar Animation Studios release, opens in area theaters Friday