Oscarwatch 2011 - Toy Story 3

It’s that time of year again… OSCAR SEASON! Keeping with the tradition of this blog, I am trying to watch all the best picture nominees before the big show, and give you my thoughts on them. Good news for me is, I’ve already seen 8 of the 10 best picture noms, but bad news is I haven’t started writing anything about them yet! That changes now. So let’s get right into the swing of things, with Toy Story 3.

We all know and love the Toy Story franchise, brought to us by the geniuses at Pixar, and you’d think there was no real way this movie could go wrong. But then you also have to remember that something you love from your childhood (the first movie came out in 1995, when I was only 9 years old) doesn’t always stay fresh and seem as awesome when you’re older. But guess what? Toy Story stayed fresh, and may have even gotten BETTER, if that’s possible.

The movie begins with Andy getting ready to leave for college, and having to put all his beloved toys into the ATTIC! GASP. But in true animated feature fashion, the bags get switched or swapped and all Andy’s beloved toys end up at a daycare center, which would be all fine and dandy EXCEPT FOR ONE THING… a mean old teddy bear who masterminds a plan to hold all of Andy’s toys captive in the little kids room where they get TORTURED. Oh, the humanity!

One of the great things about this movie is the fact that we still have all the toys we know and love around, but there are many new toys around at the daycare as well, to keep things fresh. One standout is Ken, who takes an immediate liking to Barbie and tries to woo her constantly. Buzz gets somehow reset to his factory settings, but instead is turned into a Spanish speaking Casanova, and all the while Woody is on his own, trying to get back to Andy’s house but getting intercepted by an adorable little girl instead.

There’s a very tension ridden scene involving all the toys we’ve grown to love and an incinerator towards the end of this movie, but thankfully (spoiler alert) they survive. And then we come to the end of this story, a wonderful (tear-inducing) conclusion to an incredible trilogy.

It’s amazing that we've come to expect such a high standard of both animation and storytelling from a production company as we have from Pixar, but the more amazing thing is the fact that they always deliver. They are a truly innovative company, as evidenced further by this behind-the-scenes look from The New York Times:



As for my rating for this film, it’s hard to compare it with the other nominees because it is such a different type of movie. But with that being said, there’s definitely a reason it was chosen as a Best Picture nominee — this really is filmmaking at it’s finest… great story, memorable characters, and an entire animated world — beautifully created from scratch. Compared to any other animated movie I’d give it a perfect score, hands down, but in this race I’m giving it 3.5 Marci’s on the Marci scale. I’m also giving it my very own 2011 “Nostalgia Award.” Well played, Toy Story 3. Well played.