Toy Sto­ry 3D

With film­mak­ers and audi­ences alike primed to ful­ly embrace an awe­some yet still rel­a­tive­ly alien third dimen­sion, it seems no one quite yet feels oblig­ed to judge which exist­ing films are deserved of get­ting a lick of pro­tru­sive paint. Releas­ing new films simul­ta­ne­ous­ly in both for­mats is one thing, but mak­ing the extra-dimen­sion­al leap is a gam­ble that places the integri­ty of the source at risk.

Of course, the tech­nol­o­gy is there to make such endeav­ours visu­al­ly reward­ing, but there is a par­tic­u­lar gripe that bur­dens any such reboot – the famil­iar and per­sis­tent pang that film stu­dios will go to any length to squeeze one last drop from a long since pas­tured cash cow.

Near­ly 15 years have passed since Pixar first sent kids wild for Woody and co. and turned adults, for 81 won­der­ful min­utes, into kids again. Yet few could pre­dict how Toy Sto­ry would change the face of ani­ma­tion and encour­age a new main­stream men­tal­i­ty towards CGI.

Since then Pixar have con­tin­ued to set new prece­dents with each release, either tech­ni­cal­ly or crit­i­cal­ly, and often both. They are an undis­put­ed cin­e­mat­ic yard­stick, not sim­ply paving the way for com­put­er graph­ics, but reteach­ing Hol­ly­wood the art of storytelling.

Their lat­est bench­mark, Up, is made for 3D where of course Toy Sto­ry was not. But you would nev­er know it. What is so cap­ti­vat­ing about this re-release is that while the lat­ter may not be able to com­pete with the eye­gas­mic tex­ture and dense, sprawl­ing land­scapes of Up there is a sense that every last pix­el has been affec­tion­ate­ly picked apart, retouched and del­i­cate­ly pieced back together.

The results are breath­tak­ing but, more impor­tant­ly, sub­tle. Each and every char­ac­ter has under­gone the same painstak­ing touch-up, and resul­tant­ly there is a warmth and renewed rich­ness that will ren­der you wide-eyed all over again.

Rather than over­come the audi­ence with a gim­micky sen­so­ry assault, shoot­ing spud parts or swing­ing a clum­sy dino tail through the the­atre, the rean­i­ma­tion team seem to have con­cen­trat­ed more on enhanc­ing the tone of the orig­i­nal. As such Toy Sto­ry in 3D is nev­er over­whelm­ing. Nor is it tedious, as many recent 3D vehi­cles have come too close for com­fort to.

What­ev­er your feel­ings towards all this dig­i­tal bug­gery it is hard to think of a fran­chise more fit­ting of a big screen re-run than Toy Sto­ry, regard­less of how many dimen­sions you chose to show it in. In this instance metic­u­lous care has revived what, through noth­ing more than the astro­nom­i­cal stan­dards of its suc­ces­sors, had become a visu­al­ly anti­quat­ed masterpiece.

Ulti­mate­ly 3D revamps rely on both the strength of the orig­i­nal and the imag­i­na­tions of the retouch team and Toy Sto­ry in 3D exhibits the har­mo­nious capa­bil­i­ties of this dynam­ic. Sad­ly it looks like the dou­ble fea­ture will remain reserved for our transat­lantic cousins, but give it a few years and who knows, the soon-to-be-com­plete holy trin­i­ty may well receive a back-to-back big screen run. When it comes to mak­ing dreams come true, how­ev­er, no one has a more dec­o­rat­ed his­to­ry than the House of Mouse. Here’s wish­ing upon a star.