Yes, I would say that Pixar has done it again, and I imagine pretty much everybody else will say the same as well (as I write this it’s got a 100% “Fresh” rating at Rotten Tomatoes), but there is sure to be a variation or two on that, which I’ll get to presently. I’ve got a few bullet points that I hope will not be without interest.
* Director Lee Unkrich here steps back a bit from the overt Miyazaki influence that was so splendidly evidenced in last year’s Up; although the opening sequence does have a little nod to one of the action set pieces of Laputa: Castle In The Sky, which is nice. Said opening sequence is also a nice nod to the sheer mindless fun of pretending-to-blow-stuff up without benefit of any consideration for good taste or conscience, e.g., it actually manages to make a mushroom cloud kind of cute. And gives that rendition a context that makes it entirely excusable. Very clever.
* There’s tear-jerking—as My Lovely Wife and I can both testify, there’s oodles and oodles of tearjerking. And the fact that we cried pretty much the same amount at the same exact scenes was kind of like us renewing our vows, after a fashion. And we weren’t the only ones (crying that is, not renewing vows, although who knows); a friend who we saw in the house prior to the screening sent me a Facebook message this morning saying “Sorry I couldn’t say hi after the screening last night…I was too embarrassed, trying to hide the mascara running down my face.” So. Be warned. But beyond tear-jerking, there’s also trauma, and a good deal of it. One almost thinks they sat down and looked at the burning of the forest in Bambi or the Pleasure Island stuff in Pinocchio and said, “Okay, how do we go beyond this?” And then when they mix the trauma and the tear-jerking, as when the noble toys we’ve come to know and love bond in reaction to what appears to be a literal apocalypse…oh, man. It’s emotionally exhausting. Expect some concern troll, or twenty, to put up some stupid “Is Toy Story 3 Too Intense For Children?” piece up at the Huffington Post in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6…
* I have to say, this picture had way more balls and conviction about presenting and dispensing with its villain than Cyrus did. (Yeah, yeah, I know; part of the point of Cyrus is that the villain wasn’t really a villain. And the question here isn’t “where have you heard that before,” but “where haven’t you heard that before.”)
* We saw it in IMAX 3D, which worked pretty nicely, except for some parallax issues relative to seating angle that I think have to do with the sheer size of the screen. (I hasten to add that we saw in in real IMAX, that is, in the super-humungous-screen format.) As with Up, the 3D effects were not particularly overdone, although this film’s characters and its milieus do give the filmmakers some opportunities to use some more obvious tricks aesthetic-guilt-free, and those opportunities were fully, and more often than not delightfully, exploited.
* The movie ends with a nice little treatise on how play both stimulates the imagination and one’s moral sense, which is very sweet and very smart and extremely moving.
Great movie. You should definitely see it.
Timothy Dalton as Mr Pricklepants. I’m in.
“Great movie. You should definitely see it.”
I definitely will. After finally catching up on the Pixar’s I’d missed (well, WALL‑E, which I found a little smug, but also ambitious and beautiful), and still sailing on the glory that was UP, I became concerned that the next THREE Pixar films will be sequels. Not that I have a beef with there being a TOY STORY 3, because obviously there should be many more than that, but CARS 2 and MONSTERS, INC 2 have given me some concern. I’m glad that to hear that at least the first of these sequels isn’t a step down.
The first two Toy Story films never quite resonated with me the way some of Pixar’s other films– NEMO, MONSTERS, Bird’s INCREDIBLES and the still-unmatched excellence of Bird’s RATATOUILLE– but I’m actually kind of looking forward to this one, especially with the darkness and the sadness I keep hearing about. That’s the kind family films need more of, IMHO.
@Bill– CARS 2– yeah, that kinda hurts my head. I almost want to say, why on earth do they think we need a second CARS, but my understanding is that Lasseter is a huge fan of Nascar and car culture. And so while I’m not sure I ever really want to see the film, I can appreciate the dude wanting to follow his muse, as it were.
And I believe that 2012 is going to see the release of TWO Pixar films, Bill– BRAVE in the summer and MONSTERS INC. 2 in the autumn. So it’s not ‑quite- three-in-a-row.
Why, oh why can’t they have one film that is not obviously great to everyone? This process, of people apologizing for loving every new Pixar film has got to go. There must be a less frustrating way to talk about them. The look of pity in people eyes after they hear I had problems with Up, too. I KNOW I’m going to see Toy Story 3. I KNOW I’m gonna love a lot of it. I KNOW I’m going to have the nagging suspicion that it goes soft at some point.
The inevitability of it all vexes me to no end.
I had serious problems with Wall‑E, and was downright bored with Cars, if that helps.
Absolutely cannot wait to see this. I’m the kind of pitiful softie that actually starts choking up at fucking TRAILERS for Pixar movies. I think I honestly teared up more over the trailer for Wall‑E than the film proper, but that’s neither here nor there. In any case, I’m anticipating needing more Kleenex than usual here, seeing the first Toy Story was one of the most seminal movies of my childhood, and now this one comes along right after I graduate college and REALLY have to contemplate adulthood finally. Yeesh.
Also, I should add that I think Toy Story 3 might be what finally ends my refusal to see any of these guldarn new-fangled 3‑D movies.
@Tom – I gotta think, too, that part of the appeal of CARS 2 to Lasseter & gang will be the particular international settings in the story – one of which is Japan where, speaking of Miyazaki references, we can presumably (obviously) expect a Studio Ghibli nod or two. Though they’ve been there before with TOKYO MATER. Still, Pixar animating Germany, Japan and France again… looking forward to that (in 3D).
Just an FYI @ Cars. I didn’t care much for it when it was released but now that I watch it about 75 times a week with my son I now see its particular genius.
“I almost want to say, why on earth do they think we need a second CARS”
Because Cars is a merchandising BONANZA for Pixar, especially compared to say, WALL‑E, which didn’t sell much in the way of toys. I think Cars has a terribly cliched script but at least is visually sumptious.
@ GK or anyone else – What are you thoughts on “Day & Night?” I dunno, but I think it may be the greatest Pixar short yet. Someone out there must be assembling a mini-treatise on its handling of light and sound, visual dimensionality, film history (the praxinoscope, Zoetrope, etc.) and so forth, right? Get Guy Maddin on the case.
@ Kyle—Yes, it’s utterly great and brilliant and the only reason I didn’t write about it was because to explain how it works was beyond my powers of prose. SO wonderful.
Great to hear about Day & Night. I always felt that in the accolades heaped on Up (all justified – it’s my favorite Pixar film), the short that preceded it, Partly Cloudy, got short shrift. I thought it was some of their best short work, and was seriously bummed when it didn’t get nominated for the Animated Short Oscar.
Do you guys know the children’s book “little blue and little yellow?
http://www.amazon.com/Little-Blue-Yellow-Leo-Lionni/dp/0688132855
I was reminded of it during the Day & Night short. I think both are pretty terrific.
“I would say that Pixar has done it again, and I imagine pretty much everybody else will say the same as well (as I write this it’s got a 100% “Fresh” rating at Rotten Tomatoes).”
One word, two syllables: Armond.
Miyazaki hommage at the end too – there’s a toy that looks to be a big brown stuffed Totoro. 🙂