Toy Story 3 is the best Toy Story movie. There, I said it. Okay, we're hardly the first. It was Best Picture nominated. Best Animated Feature winning. Even Quentin Tarantino had it second on his Best Movies Of The 21st Century list. All that, and the trilogy-capper was a billion dollar box office smash. But here’s the thing, folks: Toy Story 3 isn’t the best Toy Story movie simply because it’s the most emotional one, or the most mature one, or the one that most perfectly encapsulates what it is to cross that great rubicon from adolescence to adulthood (though it absolutely is all of those things.) It’s the best one because it is the most fun film of the lot — a blast from start to finish.
When Toy Story 3 hit cinemas in the summer of 2010, my then-twelve-year-old self headed into the cinema with a degree of anxiety — one foot wedged in the door of oncoming teenagehood; the other still rooted in a world of playtime, make-believe, and an abiding belief in Buzz Lightyear being the coolest character in the world. Though I was excited to see what my favourite space ranger and his plastic pals’ next chapter had in store, I couldn’t help but feel like I was walking into an emotional ambush. But as soon as the opening credits hit I was too busy smiling to worry about any tears heading my way.
Before the film’s early-doors Andy home video montage arrives to start tugging on the ol’ heartstrings, director Lee Unkrich and co quickly set the pace here with the rootin’est, tootin’est of cold opens – a barnstorming Wild West homage featuring a runaway train chase that’s surely second only to The Wrong Trousers’ loco locomotive climax. Boasting exploding bridges, Trolls on trains, aliens in convertibles, and the dastardly return of Evil Dr. Porkchop – threatening death by monkeys – it brings a young Andy’s wildest playtimes to blockbuster life before our very eyes. It’s a kinetic, visually dazzling opening gambit that instantly gets the blood pumping. A good time only makes a goodbye more meaningful, and Toy Story 3 is on a mission to give us the best time possible.
Pixar brings out some new toys that really take playtime to the next level.
Throughout Toy Story 3’s first act, much of that good time comes from Pixar playing on our extant affection for Woody, Buzz, and the gang, peppering the movie’s burgeoning existential crises with bright and breezy callbacks to past adventures (Slinky Dog and Rex’s “attack dog with a built-in forcefield” vs “dinosaur who eats force fields” redux always raises a smile.) But when the focus inevitably shifts to Sunnyside, Bonnie’s house, and their respective dolly denizens, Pixar brings out some new toys that really take playtime to the next level.
It’s honestly kind of nuts to think now that, without Woody’s sojourn to Bonnie’s house, we would never have met lederhosen-clad thespian hedgehog Mr. Pricklepants (voiced by the great Timothy Dalton), or Kristen Schaal’s gamer girl triceratops Trixie, or Jeff Garlin’s sarcastic unicorn Buttercup. Or a cameo-ing Totoro! And for all of Sunnyside’s many less-than-sunny sides, the chaotic daycare provides several exciting additions too: Michael Keaton's ascot-rocking himbo Ken, ripped insectoid warrior Twitch, robo-rock-monster Chunk, and hardened Sunnyside lifer the Fisher Price phone.
Toy Story 3 also gives us the most heinous Pixar villain of them all… that evil bear who smells of strawberries: Lotso — or, as he is better known in my house, Bear Hitler. Sure, he comes in with Ned Beatty’s syrupy Southern drawl – all smiles, “I’m a hugger”, and little old man cane – but make no mistake: he’s diabolical. Sid in Toy Story was just a kid playing in his own weird way. Al in Toy Story 2 at least cared about preserving the toys. Even Stinky Pete is more of a tragic figure than an out-and-out wrong’un. But Lotso – despite his own troubled past – chooses to be the absolute worst, at every available opportunity. He maliciously lies to his friends. He runs Sunnyside like a POW camp, wilfully torturing toys as a daycare dictator. He turns Buzz against his friends. He breaks Big Baby’s Daisy pendant, makes him cry, and jabs him in the stomach! And worst of all, after Woody goes out of his way to save him from the shredder, Lotso still leaves them all to die in the incinerator. Seriously, fuck that guy!
As Andy drives away, it’s like saying goodbye to our own childhoods all over again.
A stacked roster and hissable villain would all be for nought if Toy Story 3 didn’t have anything to hang them all on. Enter the Sunnyside prison break: somehow even bigger than Toy Story 2's epic airport chase. As a kid, I was gobsmacked by my heroes’ feats of derring-do — Barbie torturing Ken(’s wardrobe), the double delights of Mr. Tortilla and Mr. Pickle Head, Woody and Jessie taping up the cymbal-clashing monkey, the whole gang coming together to turn the tables on Lotso. As an adult, I now get an extra kick out of the film’s wonderfully playful nods to all-timer escape movies like The Great Escape and The Shawshank Redemption – in fact, any self-respecting cinephile who doesn’t revel in the movie’s many references to Cool Hand Luke spends a night in the box.
We also have the Sunnyside jailbreak to thank for Spanish Buzz (or, ‘El Buzzo’, as Woody dubs him), turning Tim Allen’s straight-faced space ranger into a flamenco-dancing lothario worthy of a telenovela. Cue wheeze-worthy hysterics as a heavily-accented Buzz (voiced by Javier Fernandez Peña, Spain's own Buzz actor) shamelessly rizzes up Jessie and lithely bounds about.
Without all of Toy Story 3’s fun and its genuine sense of play, there’s no way we’d be able to handle all of the movie’s big emotional moments. And those moments really do hit hard. Watching this fabricated family we’ve loved for so long hold hands as they stare into the incinerator endures as one of the boldest — and most poignant — dramatic beats in animation history. Even after they escape, watching the gang face up to life after Andy, enjoying one last playtime with their kid before he passes them into young Bonnie’s care… well, that’s even more powerful. When Woody says “so long partner” as Andy drives away, it’s like saying goodbye to our own childhoods all over again.
Watching Toy Story 3 now, sixteen years on from its release, I am awed once again by this cinematic unicorn: an adult film for children and a children’s film for adults, that somehow sticks the landing on one of the very best trilogies ever made (until it wasn’t a trilogy anymore). It makes me laugh. It makes me cry. It makes me smile as I sing ‘We Belong Together’ in my best Randy Newman croon to my cringing daughters. And from when I was that twelve-year-old boy sat anxiously waiting to find out my heroes’ fate, right through to today – when I’ve come to appreciate that these toys and their stories will surely outlast us all – it continues to deliver the best time possible. For that, all that’s really left to say is: thanks, guys.
Read why the original Toy Story is the best Toy Story movie
Read why Toy Story 2 is the best Toy Story movie
Toy Story 3 is streaming now on Disney+