If I might discuss Toy Story 3 in personal terms - and, frankly, I can see no other way for someone my age to discuss it - this opening sequence did not quite tug at my heartstrings, but it did something far more satisfactory: it put me in an oddly serene mood, a wistful reminder not simply of a happier time but an entire perspective that I lost. A child can envision a scenario more fantastically out-there than even the most sandbox-oriented video game can accommodate, and the first major heartbreak of Toy Story 3 is the presentation of this delightful use of free time in the flashbacks of home videos, as if capturing something that one day becomes just a memory and not a way of looking at the world. For proof of this, one need only look at the opening sequence, a brilliant combination of the openings of the first two movies, in which Andy's playtime receives the grand, imaginative visualization that opened the second film (which incidentally presaged the modern mindset by replacing Andy's imagination with a video game). With only the slightest suggestion, Unkrich plants the idea into the mind of even a 20-year-old that "kids today" don't know the joy of tossing around some tacky plastic spacemen and cowgirls in your own imagined universe. Even Molly, now a tween still young enough to get away with playing with toys, has no interest in them, absorbed with her iPod and concerned only with taking over her brother's room and swiping whatever electronics he does not take with him. With Andy all grown up and headed for college, the few remaining toys in his care find themselves awaiting an uncertain future bound either for the attic or the garbage can. Toy Story 3 deals in nostalgia, which is only natural because its characters are toys, which are rapidly becoming obsolete. Director Lee Unkrich, a longtime Pixar employee given his first big shot, clearly wants to do well by the series - and, by extension of the first Toy Story's significance, the entire Pixar studio - so he attempts to juggle the history of the franchise and the studio while still making a fresh story to appeal to younger children who may well be coming to Toy Story 3 to see their first Pixar movie. An understandable decision, to be sure, as mainstream American audiences still will not see an animated film as anything other than kiddie fare, and if Pixar has a tragic flaw, it is that they choose not to break through this ceiling despite bumping against it so often the glass must be one good shove from shattering at this point. (This is also why, in the interview, you can hear me stumble when talking about this, to the point that I use the word "interesting" three times in less than 30 seconds because, damn it, I was very interested suddenly.)Īfter I sat down in the theater, however, I quickly realized that, as much as Toy Story 3 might be aimed at my generation, it must still play for the one that came after us. For the first time since leaving childhood, I was in exactly the right age group to see an animated film. Because I tried not to let any unfair expectations build in my mind, I had not previously thought about this, and suddenly I felt excitement for the film that matched any of the art films I knew wouldn't come to my neck of the woods. Now, I kept myself as in-the-dark as I possibly could for Toy Story 3, as I do for any film that catches my interest, so Pat caught me off-guard during the interview when he mentioned that the premise of Toy Story 3, about a college-bound teen leaving behind his toys, effectively targeted the film at my generation, specifically those who got to see the first movie as children in a theater - I was 6 when I saw it - and now find ourselves off to college. Pat McGrath, a terribly nice man who put up with far too much of my nerdy rambling, read my reviews of the first two films of the series and liked them sufficiently to ask for my thoughts about the series and Pixar as a whole. About a month ago, I received an email from a reporter for RTE, Irish national radio, asking - to my complete surprise - for an interview related to the upcoming release of Toy Story 3*.
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