Toy Story Signals the End of my Childhood

So I went to the midnight showing of Toy Story 3 with my girlfriend.

This was it. We'd been waiting eleven years for the final chapter of our beloved toy story.

What struck me first of all were the number of badass people attending the movie. Seriously, these kids came straight from battling narwhals and jumping off of exploding planes to come see Toy Story 3. It was just touching to see everyone embracing their inner child.

Example badass person

The second thing that struck me was the short before the movie. It was quite unlike any previous Pixar short, and was actually less three dimensional, despite the fact that we were looking through 3D glasses. How to describe it? It was certainly visually stunning. And cute, of course. That's a requirement. The short was definitely an indication as to how far Disney and Pixar's relationship has come.

Then there was the movie. Toy Story 3 reminded me a lot of Rugrats All Growed Up in that it shared many of the elements of the two previous movies, but it wrapped up the series nicely. Andy is, as I suggested, all growed up, and heading out to college. We, the audience, get to see some inner turmoil because Andy can't just bring all of his toys to school. That would be ridiculous. And unmanly.

I was most saddened to discover that many of Andy's toys had already been given away. But I guess that's realistic--I'd keep Woody over Bopeep, too. Most of the cast is still there, though: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Kusak, Don Rickles, and John Ratzenberger (who has been in every Disney-Pixar film to date). There are several newcomers as well, like Whoopi Goldberg and Michel Keaton.

Toy Story 3 is finally out of the box

All in all I rather enjoyed it. I won't go too much into the plot, but Woody and company mistakenly get sent to a day care center, where a number of seemingly friendly toys welcome them to their own retirement-ish home. A conspiracy is exposed, blah blah blah, and three unlikely/otherworldly heroes save the gang from sure destruction.

Awesome. Also, in what was arguably one of the best scenes of the movie, Buzz runs around speaking spanish and lusts after the gorgeous Jessie.

Though a lot of the humor was slapstick, I greatly enjoyed the film. And now my childhood is over. There is simply nothing left to hold onto.

My inner child today

Who knows? Maybe they'll make Rugrats into a live-action movie...

Actually I hope they don't do that.