Saw Toy Story the other day. (Late, I know.) And the final verdict...
...C-, and the only reason it's that high is because of the animation. Otherwise it would be two full grades lower. Worst movie I've seen in the past year (not counting a few bloopers from the Asian American Film Fest) and perhaps the biggest disappointment of all time to me.
I usually adore this type of movie (LOVED How to Train Your Dragon and I even liked Shrek 4, which was even more of an unnecessary sequel than TS3). But ugh. It just totally rubbed me the wrong way.
The good: The animation was brilliant. TS1 and TS2, as long as they didn't fudge anything up, would have wow'd because the animation was then cutting edge, but this took it to a whole new level.
The bad: This was cancelled out by having a worse story line than that "Godzilla" movie a few years back.
SPOILER ALERTS
Too many inconsistencies; the thing I really liked about the first two TS is that every time a human comes into the room - the toys rearrange themselves right back to where they left them. This one ripped that to shreds. The issue of how the toys "officially" got back to Andy was never resolved and then when Woody writes a note telling him to donate the toys to that girl, and then Woody himself jumping in that box -- totally fudged up the meaning of the series. And put a completely misplaced tearjerking scene in.
There were were so many things here that didn't belong in a G-rated movie either. Don't get me wrong; I'm no puritan but it was incredibly disturbing to see a bunch of these things in a movie about kids' toys, aimed for kids. First, there's Barbie and Ken. That's ok, but right when they meet Ken asks Barbie if she wants to spend the night in his dreamhouse and then the rest of the toys cheer her on! This is just so akin to college frat boys/sorrority girls trying to get their bro/sis a "Score." Then Barbie saying "nice ascot" - seriously, she might as well have just said "nice ass" and it would have been the same.
The bear's a sociopath too - kids don't need to see that and to top it off everything having to do with the bear was portrayed so badly. If the rest of the toys were trying to get on his good side, for instance, it didn't help that Woody seemed to rub it because he kept on rubbing it in to the bear "you got replaced!" And then when Woody saves him from the dumpster at the end - WTF!!! The bear tried to kill him!!! You do NOT save people who try to kill you - that's irresponsible AND dangerous!
Finally, the scene where the toys were about to burn to their fiery deaths -- that didn't belong in a kids movie either.
I also felt disgusted at the toys being covered in garbage and then simply washed themselves off as if nothing had happened and going back to Andy. They're still going to bring so many germs back to the owner -- seriously if I found out my toys did had been there I'd just throw them all away.
And then a few things happened that just didn't make a lot of sense. The girl already has her set of toys, she didn't need to acquire a whole new set of them. (And the toys are going to have the same problem in another 10 years or so.)
Woody, when explaining to the girls' toys how he "escaped" from the nursery, puts on the most generic arrogant face, which was just completely unncessary and by this point overdone. (Hiccup in 'Dragon' was like this, and it was equally annoying but understandable as it was integral to his character. It's not to Woody's so there was no reason for him to act like that.)
A few things about the story that I can appreciate:
The girl's toys, when hearing that Woody already has an owner, helped him locate him.
and the Barbie and Ken scene, despite the above caveats, was probably the most well-done of the character dynamics in the movie.
Worst of all, although this isn't something I can really take off for, now the market is once again going to be flooded with a bunch of ugly toys - most notably Woody and Buzz Lightyear. They were ok in the movie as generic toys but they don't need to be real.
