TOY STORY 3

Written by Michael Arndt

Directed by Lee Unkrich

Voices by Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Ned Beatty and Michael Keaton

Hamm: C’mon, let’s go see how much we’re going for on EBay. 

There comes a point in every boy’s life when he has to grow up.  Ok, fine.  There are many points in a boy’s life when he must do this but going off to college is certainly an undeniable turning point.  You leave behind your family, your friends and the only home you know, including a chunk of everything you own.  For young Andy, a boy we first met when he was just eight years old, leaving for college means putting away all the toys that brought him so many hours of enjoyment back in his day.  And so he throws Buzz, Rex, Slink and the rest of them in a bag destined for the attic.  Some have said that after sitting in their own attic, the people at Pixar should have left their very first success, TOY STORY, exactly where they left it eleven years ago.  Fortunately for all of us though, the people at Pixar will never fully grow up.  The toys are out of the attic and they’re better than ever!

Letting go, dealing with new realities, distancing yourself so as to avoid ever getting hurt – these are just a few of the touching themes that are subtly told in TOY STORY 3.  The Academy Award winning writer of LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, Michael Arndt, follows up his first success with what could very likely net him another trophy.  Arndt understands that adventure can be subjective – that what might seem small and unimportant to some is the biggest challenge others will ever face.  He also understands that adventure is made perilous when those involved have much to lose.  For our favourite toys, the loss is particularly significant – they are about to lose their reason for being.  Being relegated to the attic means that these toys will no longer be played with, that they will no longer be able to bring joy to their favourite guy, Andy.  So as Andy lets go of them, they must learn to let go of him as well.

Toys passing the time in the attic might not make for a very exciting film though.  (Mind you, if anyone could make it exciting, it would be these guys.)  Instead, the toys find themselves donated to a nursery school.  Well, most of them anyway; our man Woody (Tom Hanks) was selected to go off to college with Andy but, as luck would have it, Woody seems to have found himself lost and on the loose once again.  While Woody tries to make his way home alone, his pals are stuck in nursery hell, where kids play with you for hours, sure, but they also have no regard for these toys because they just aren’t their own.  First time full-fledged Pixar director, Lee Unkrich (Unkrich previously co-directed FINDING NEMO, MONSTERS INC., and the second TOY STORY film), ties these two storylines together seamlessly and charges the entire picture with an intensity that never lets up and culminates in a climax so dire that it catches the viewer off guard and triggers an emotional response that cannot be contained.  Just ask the guy sitting next to me.

TOY STORY 3 is triumphant!  It carries the depth and hilarity that one has come to expect from Pixar and then carries it even further still.  Even though I say it again and again when I review their films, they are constantly outdoing themselves.  Here, they’ve achieved the extremely rare feat of making threequel a decade after the last installment that actually surpasses both films that came before it.  Even though they’re playing with toys, their maturity continues to expand and their visual mastery continues to break their own barriers.  Their films work because they have soul.  The spirit of TOY STORY lives in that special bond between a boy and his toys.  Back when life was simple, they were all we needed and, according to Pixar, we were all they needed too.  And by taking these toys out of the attic and doing right by them one more time, Pixar incites that rare and wonderful feeling of nostalgic warmth that one gets all over their body when find themselves unexpectedly playing again with their favourite toys.

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE

Written by Michael Arndt
Directed by Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is this year’s Sundance breakout and nearly all the press its received thus far has lauded it as, well, a little ray of sunshine to carry audiences through the last month of summer. It is the independent underdog that will tickle your funny bone, stimulate your mind and warm your heart. This little movie has so much to live up to and it has barely even gone wide at the moment I am writing this. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE isn’t generating its own buzz; it’s having its buzz generated by the machine that wants so badly for it to be that movie it could. Y’know which one I’m talking about. The smaller, simpler movie that allows a more mature audience to wind down their summer, to let the ringing in their ears from all the explosive blockbusters subside. What the machine doesn’t understand is that the movie that fills that particular void is not manufactured. It is genuine and it earns that honour all by itself.

This honour is not one I feel LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE would have earned if it weren’t manufactured for it. Albeit an endearing film with authentic moments of hilarity and sentiment, it is often disconnected and unresolved. The dual director team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris create a believable family unit by giving each member their own personal touch. Dad is a failed motivational speaker; Mom has to deal with loser dad; Grandpa has a heroine problem; older brother has taken a vow of silence until he becomes a fighter pilot; and gay uncle Frank is fresh out of the hospital after trying to kill himself. Dealing themselves such a diverse hand of characters leaves many opportunities to cross the line between quirky and just plain awkward, which they do more often then they should. Then of course there’s Little Miss Sunshine wannabe herself, Olive. With an earnest enthusiasm and innocence beaming from her face (like a ray of … sorry), untouched and uncorrupted Olive reminds the family that they are in fact a family. It’s a lovely story but it is one that only takes shape in the final moments of the film. Prior to that, each character’s individual problems guide all of their own motivations and they only barely have any depth past these problems. Shifting each characters’ focus outwards gives the film some much needed structure but it leaves many an issue either unresolved or resolved far too quickly.


The ensemble cast of LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE reigns as the true heart of this organism. Cramped together in their yellow mini-bus, many different personalities fester. Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette are the heads of the family. Collette is merely a device to highlight the failures of her husband through her aggravation with him. Kinnear’s role however is hefty and he stridently carries that weight as an emasculated patriarch who preaches his failed life lessons to his daughter because she is the only one still buying them. Like another successful family piece, Noah Baumbach’s THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, the influence of the parents on the children manifests before your eyes in a difficult and painful fashion. Steve Carrell plays suicidal uncle, Frank, like a seemingly dormant volcano that may or may not erupt. You just can’t tell. His mystery is heartening and shows promise for his developing capabilities.

As a critic, shedding expectations is a higher state of being I try to achieve before I watch anything. I don’t read other reviews before I see the movie or even before I sit down to write my own, all as an effort to keep it real (dawg). It only takes a quick glance at a magazine cover to get whether people are hating, liking or really loving a movie so it is hard to avoid entirely. But as much as I try to approach each film with a fresh piece of paper to write on, buzz manages to influence the way we see things. When I’m told that something is really solid and it isn’t, even just a little, my disappointment is magnified. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE has so many things going for it that what it is lacking makes it all the more frustrating because you really want it to live up to the hype. Still ...