Toy Story 3

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Plot: Andy has grown up, and is packing for college. The toys end up at the local daycare, wherethey are oppressed by the other toys especially by Latso the bear. The toys want to break out, and get back to Andy. 

Review: The writers (Arndt and Lasseter) have written a clever screen play about growing up, and loss, and hurt feelings and friendship. This provides purpose and emotional weight to the various scenes where the toys trek from bedroom to trashbin to daycare and so on.

There are several cute and funny gags especially between Ken and Barbie. Ken was as gender-bendingly fabulous as he was smitten with Barbie.

I loved the Chuckles the Clown, who has led a sad life -- I'd buy one of collectable figures. It was clever to put a sad clown in the story to spin the villian's backstory.

Chuckles the Clown is probably based on the a character of the same name on the Mary Tyler Moore Show. 

I loved the Spanish language Buzz too.

When we get to the last scene, I was caught up in the movie and felt sad.

Directed by: Lee Unkrich
Written by: Michael Ardnt and John Lasseter

Rating: 3.5 flasks; So why isn't this a 4.0?  It was fun, but not fun enough. The characters were emotive, but not consistently. Unlike most summer movies, this movie was about something substantive. This will be on my ten-best list in the fall.


More:I loved the Spanish language Buzz Lightyear too.

Even more: I like to see kids movies in the evening when there are at least a few other adults, but the kids in the audience really added to the experience because they laughed at the sight-gags -- like the Spanish-language Buzz dancing with Jesse.
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