Toy Story 3

When I saw Toy Story 3 a year and a half ago in theaters, I was very, very pleased. It seemed like a perfect Pixar movie, a film that dealt with a wide range of emotions and themes from the human experience, but one that did so with G-rated content and anthropomorphic toys. And perhaps more impressively, it was far and away an all-around better movie than either of its two predecessors, which were each damn good flicks in their own right. When I slid the disc into my PS3 earlier tonight, I was initially worried that it wouldn't impress me so much on a second time around. After all, WALL·E had started out as my new favorite Pixar movie but by the time I went back and watched it again earlier this year on Blu-ray I couldn't resist noting a slight datedness. But no. Toy Story 3 held up just fine. It didn't feel quite as funny, since I wasn't in the theater surrounded by a living laugh track, and it wasn't quite as tense or emotionally touching due to my familiarity with the content this time around. But while watching certain scenes, especially at the end of the film, I was reminded of my initial reaction to those scenes. And I recalled how much they affected me the first time around, and that only further cemented the legacy of Toy Story 3 in my mind as one of the best and greatest animated movies I've ever seen. (If you were to ask me for just one absolute best, it's probably Toy Story 3. The question is whether or not it warrants discussion as one of the best movies, period. Its "Best Picture" nomination suggests that it does.) I'm assuming that most people reading this have in fact already seen Toy Story 3, so there's really no need for me to try to sell it to anyone, but all the same... check out Toy Story 3 if you've yet to do so.