Toy Story 3: Critic Reviews

An absolutely dreadful summer at the movies is rescued by the wizards at Pixar.

Even with the bar raised high, Toy Story 3 enchanted and moved me so deeply I was flabbergasted that a digitally animated comedy about plastic playthings could have this effect.

This film -- this whole three-part, 15-year epic -- about the adventures of a bunch of silly plastic junk turns out also to be a long, melancholy meditation on loss, impermanence and that noble, stubborn, foolish thing called love.

It's an effortlessly superior family movie.

How the animation wizards at Pixar keep coming up with innovative and rapturous stories is one of the miracles in modern film.

It's an emotional dissonance Pixar has always been supremely comfortable with, as Toy Story 3 once again proves with knowing humor, wildly imaginative visual virtuosity and bittersweet rue.

Toy Story 3 rouses itself, rung by rung of visual and conceptual invention, until it can stand close to the level of Pixar's best. More than that: The heart still beats in this franchise's digital chest.

By the time its poetic ending arrives, encapsulating the transformative, continuing power of play, we recognize that none of us move from one stage of life, or beyond, without help from our friends.

I won't tell you what that ending is, but it took my breath away, and I'll bet it takes yours. Do see this lovely film sooner than later.

The technical wizardry only enhances Toy Story 3's emotional resonance.

Consider the oft-amusing, terribly clever G-rated sequel Toy Story 3 as the brightest student in the class delivering a very fine B paper.

Toy Story 3 succeeds not because of its glossy and gleaming high-tech pixels, but rather because it is so well-written that you could tell it with low-tech hand puppets and still thrill and reach an audience of children and adults both.

The gags are all of a piece, right up to the forlorn yet enchanting finale.

I expect its target audience will love it, and at the box office, it may take right up where How to Train Your Dragon left off. Just don't get me started about the 3-D.

Though uneven and less witty than the first two, Toy Story 3 delivers quite enough in two dimensions.

Toy Story 3 is solid, smile-inducing stuff. But by the inherent nature of a sequel, and our familiarity with the main characters, the glow of originality has dissipated.

I'd like to thank the folks at Pixar for ending Toy Story 3 with a nice long gag reel alongside the final credits. It gave me time to blot away my tears before entering the lobby.

More than with any other Pixar film, there's an edge and sadness that clings to Toy Story 3, even as it's bouncing from one zany situation to the next or trotting out some impossibly cute toy character.

Toy Story 3 is very much a worthy entry in the series, a movie well worth making (and seeing). It continues the legacy. It just doesn't expand upon it.

This tertiary adventure delivers welcome yet nonessential fun, landing well after its creators have grown up and succeeded toying with more sophisticated stories.

Toy Story 3 may not be a masterpiece, but it still had me in tears at the end.

Dazzling, scary and sentimental, Toy Story 3 is a daringly dark and emotional conclusion to the film series that made Pixar famous.

Toy Story 3 is every bit as amusing and delightful as its predecessor, but there are darker elements to the saga.

A worthy finale to a fantastic franchise.

Once it kicks in to unexpectedly become a prison-break thriller, it fires on all cylinders all the way to the finish line.