![]() ![]() ![]() But that theme of rejection was addressed already in Toy Story 2, in the movie’s best song, Sarah McLachlan’s "When She Loved Me," sung by Jessie about the girl who outgrew her. Called Lotso for short, he is a Teddy Bear gone bad - ably voiced by Ned Beatty - and the main villain of the piece. Much of Toy Story 3 revolves around toys who have been forgotten, abandoned and rejected by their owners - the Toy Story gang are convinced they were deliberately thrown out by Andy - a theme of betrayal that leaves scars on their psyches (SPOILER ALERT follows), most notably on smooth talking Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear. (Andy planned to take Woody, his first toy, off to school with him.) Woody tries to rescue his friends and in the process they all end up at Sunnyside, a ‘bucolic’ day care centre, which is not all it seems to be. The movie’s plot is set in motion when Andy (John Morris), the toys’ owner, now grown up and headed off to college, fails to notice that his possessions, except for Woody, have been thrown in the trash instead of being packed away in the attic, as he intended. The movie rarely stops to catch its breath, which is the exact opposite tack to that taken in the leisurely and (mostly) quietly played out story-lines that bolstered the first two films in the series. ![]() Potato Head (Don Rickles and Estelle Harris), facing constant danger from evil toys, rambunctious children, and a junkyard incinerator, among other threats. It’s wearying, what with the group, including Woody, the cowboy character (voiced by Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear, the astronaut / action figure (Tim Allen) who looks a lot like former Canadian Prime Minster Brian Mulroney, Jessie, the Calamity Jane like-heroine (Joan Cusack), Rex, the nervous dinosaur (Wallace Shawn) and Mr. That frantic screenplay has the toys, who come to life when there are no adults and kids around, thrown into one Perils of Pauline adventure after another. Did Disney, which owns Pixar, pressure them to go with something familiar for Pixar’s second foray into 3-D, after Up? ( Toy Story 3 is also being released in 2-D.) That’s possible because the film simply doesn’t do much that’s fresh with its likable and diverse characters and the film’s 3-D effects, fine as they are, seem to be driving the story instead of serving the needs of the screenplay, which was written by four writers, Michael Arndt, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich, who also directed the film.(Four writers on one film is two writers too many.) I’m actually not sure why the folks at Pixar felt the need to revisit Woody, Buzz Lightyear and the rest of the gang of toys, after the previous two excellent movies in the series, released in 19, respectively. But it’s not and it also suggests something of a continuing slippage in quality control in the company’s output. I wish I could say that Pixar’s Toy Story 3 is up to the high standards of most of their previous films. ![]()
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