Toy Story 3

[Cadaverous Pallor]

We're going to see it!!! This weekend!!! YAY!!!!!!!






My expectations are a bit high

[Alex]

Well, since both iSm and I are effusive in our praise it falls to you or GD to take up the curmudgeon role. Make us proud.

[RStar]

Mr. Tortilla Head was histerical!! It was so out of the box that it was almost jarring, and made me stop and think "what were those guys smoking when they came up with that???"

But there was so much fantastic humor, that it balanced the darkness and sadness, and was such a roller coaster of emotion that by the time that the tear-jerking end came along you are an emotional wreck and can't help by cry like a blubbering 3 year old. Masterfully done!

[Strangler Lewis]

Without going so far to say that everyone has lost their minds, I'm going to have to blow it the raspberry. Some of the major problems:

1) the set up was tedious.
2) the villain was a retread from Toy Story 2.
3) the conflict at the daycare center: the problem of the lack of age appropriateness was contrived and uninteresting. Perhaps the plight in which our hero toys found themselves was meant to evoke some of the horrors of the 20th century, but it still needed to stand on its own, and it did not.
4) The moving set up of the characters' demise at the dump--which, frankly, I was expecting--was shat on to throw in another claw joke.
5) At first I thought Bonnie was a poor kid who was stuck at the center where her mom worked. Then it looked like she was quite well off. Why did she deserve all the toys?

Etc.

Yes, there were some good jokes, and a few moving bits, but it didn't add up. For a more moving meditation on the putting away of childish things, I recommend listening to Puff the Magic Dragon a few times and saving the ticket prices.

[Alex]

CP and GD, you're off the hook.

[innerSpaceman]

Yep, he handled that quite well. But the only thing contrived was SL's entire take on the film. I can only surmise that he was on the rag that evening, or the popcorn had glue in it.


Ok, yeah, yeah, entitled to his opinion ... but, well, since apparently 99.99375% of human beings on the planet disagree, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that opinion is simply Dead Wrong.*




* I'm just being facetious: Most people love Toy Story 2, and I pretty much think it's an amusing piece of sequel crap.

[Strangler Lewis]

I could work myself into a lather comparable to my lather about Cars in that Toy Story 3 seems to imply that unless you have the perfect, creative job, your life is unfulfilled. Except that it undercuts that premise in the closing montage by showing all the toys at the daycare center working together to let the little ones play.

The whole bad situation at the daycare center was contrived, forced and unconvincing. It's not like these kids were Sid or anything.

As my dad might have said: El Stinko.

[innerSpaceman]

I'm not sure what you mean by "contrived." It was the entire plot of the movie.

It's like saying that whole search for ancient artifacts crap was contrived in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The daycare situation is what the movies was ABOUT (plotwise). You may not have liked it, but all screenplays are contrived in this way.

So, if you were trying to construct a paradise-turned-sour, prison-break movie with a cast of TOYS, where exactly would you set it?

[Gemini Cricket]

Speaking of Sid, did anyone notice that he was the garbage man? From what I remember, it was a quick shot. The moral, of course, is that if you're bad as a kid you will become a garbage man.

[Strangler Lewis]

The problem was that the problem was not worth caring about. And the fact that the problem was maintained by characters branded as evil did not make the problem any less trivial.