Toy Sto­ry 3

There’s not much Pixar tends to get wrong, serv­ing up films that are both tech­no­log­i­cal­ly impres­sive and chock-full of soul, sto­ry and char­ac­ter. Their lat­est ven­tures have even braved the murky com­plex­i­ties of life, death and rela­tion­ships with heart-wrench­ing suc­cess. How­ev­er, with Toy Sto­ry 3, we’re back on dan­ger­ous­ly famil­iar ter­ri­to­ry: revis­it­ing the char­ac­ters that made them famous, the Pixar gang need to do some­thing spe­cial if they’re not to be out­shone by their own success.

Own­er Andy is all grown up and prepar­ing to leave for col­lege. Rel­e­gat­ed to the stor­age box, Woody and friends find them­selves inad­ver­tent­ly donat­ed to the day care cen­tre, and so begins their quest to head back home. With vil­lains in the shape of an over­grown baby and a bear that smells of straw­ber­ries, Pixar have def­i­nite­ly inject­ed the froth back into the for­mu­la, but where Up real­ly did have some­thing for every­one, Toy Sto­ry 3 adheres strict­ly to kids-only conventions.

At least Pixar haven’t been dis­tract­ed by 3D. As well as being visu­al­ly stun­ning, Toy Sto­ry 3 still boasts acute­ly observed humour, along­side the nuance and detail that have always been the hall­marks of Pixar’s writ­ing. Cer­tain­ly, the tech­nol­o­gy hasn’t been used as an excuse for lazy nar­ra­tive tricks.

It’s rare that a fran­chise sur­vives more than one iter­a­tion with integri­ty intact. It’s rar­er still that it does so when it has guar­an­teed bums on seats and a stu­pen­dous amount of cash in the offer­ing. And yet the Toy Sto­ry brand hasn’t suc­cumbed to a pile ​‘em high, sell ​’em cheap sen­si­bil­i­ty. Inevitably, the premise has lost some of its sparkle, but with the dia­logue sharp and the per­for­mances charis­mat­ic, Toy Sto­ry 3 is a sat­is­fy­ing if not sur­pris­ing farewell to old friends.