Movie Review: Toy Story 3

I've yet to jump on the Pixar bandwagon. I guess I was just confused as to why so many grown men and twenty-somethings were completely obsessed with kid's movies. I saw and loved their first movie, the original Toy Story, but that was when I was 10 years old. After that I missed every single one of their movies until I took my niece to see Cars, what many consider to be their worst release.

But now, no one will shut up about them, and I've got a kid that is just about movie-going age. One day I was bored on a weekend and watching one of those Madagascar movies that was on TV, and I started missing the type of movies I saw in my youth. The ones that weren't afraid to dip into dark territory. In Lion King (which came out a year before Pixar's theatrical debut), the main characters father is trampled to death, and I wasn't emotionally scarred watching that at nine years old.

It seems like in the last decade or so, a majority of kid's movies have lost all consequence and drama. As we protect our kids more and more by getting rid of anything mildly dangerous like monkey bars, we've also started to shield them from reality in their media. But as I sat and watched Toy Story 3, I realized that Pixar had never let go of the kind of storytelling that the kid's movies I watched when I was little had, and I suddenly knew why so many grown adults and twenty-somethings were so obsessed with all of their movies.

I mean, I guess no one was trampled to death by a herd of wildebeests in this movie, but everything just seems more grounded in reality... er, a reality in which toys are alive. And they didn't shy away from some pretty dark moments, yet, my two and half year old daughter watched with fascination throughout, and wasn't scared by any of it.

As I've written about before, I think we're underestimating what our children can handle, so it's good to see that not everyone is. Does this mean I'm one of those Pixar nuts, now? Oh man, I had planned on writing an article entitled, "I Don't Get Pixar." I guess that's scrapped.

Score: 5 out of 5
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