The first "Toy Story" effectively launched the computer animation revolution, and by the time the sequel came out four years later, the war was over. "Toy Story 3," arriving 11 years after the second film, is like the return of the conquering emperor to survey his domain.
After spooning up more than $1 billion in box office sales, it's clear that despite challenges from some upstarts, Pixar remains the animation king.
"Toy Story 3" takes place in roughly real time. Andy is now a grown man about to depart for college, leaving Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), Jessie the Cowgirl (Joan Cusack) and the rest of the gang uncertain about their fate.
After some misadventures, they end up at Sunnyside Day Care, where a cuddly bear named Lotso (Ned Beatty) calls the shots. At first it looks heaven for old toys, what with the never-ending supply of children needing toys to play with.
But before long a nasty pecking order is revealed, and the toys long to go home -- even if it means a lengthy downtime in the attic.
Besides Lotso, the other top new addition to the mix is Ken (Michael Keaton), the original metrosexual. When he's not acting as the big bear's right-hand flunky, Ken is obsessed with collecting every fashion accessory available -- until he lays his plastic eyes on Barbie, of course.
Fun, adventurous and with a strong dose of pathos, "Toy Story 3" reminds us what a great golden age of animation in which we find ourselves.
Bonus features are simply stupendous.
Interestingly, there's a completely different set of extras with the DVD and Blu-ray versions. The Blu-ray/DVD combo pack includes both sets of goodies, plus a few more -- not to mention a digital copy of the film.
There's so much stuff, in fact, that it's impossible to catalogue it all. The following is just highlights.
DVD: "Day and Night" short film; new epilogue; Buzz Lightyear Mission Logs; "Paths to Pixar," "Studio Stories" and "A Toy's Eye View" featurettes.
Blu-ray: Interactive feature with director Lee Unkrich; commentary track; trivia game; Ken's Dating Tips; commercial for Lotso; featurettes on the Western opening sequence, saying goodbye to Andy and Pixar's "Accidental Toymakers."
In addition to these, the combo pack boasts several other featurettes and making-of docs, including a look back on the trilogy, with all the various toys who have appeared and the actors who provided the voices.
It's been 15 years since the first "Toy Story" came out, and it's not an exaggeration to say it changed the face of animation forever.
Back then, it seemed a new golden age of hand-drawn creativity was upon us: "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin," "The Lion King." Then some folks at a little upstart company called Pixar decided computers could do the job even better.
Within a few years -- certainly by 1999, when the wonderful "Toy Story 2" came out -- it was clear CG was the new king. Flash another decade later, and it was actually a novelty when Disney made a new hand-animated movie, "The Princess and the Frog," released last winter to modest success.
But with "Toy Story 3" now gracing theaters -- and coming not a moment too soon to save us from one of the most dismal summer of movies in memory -- we're reminded that it isn't the canvas or the paint that matters, but the vision of the artist. It's not about dazzling us with coolest new visual technique, but crafting a story and characters that touch us and take us somewhere unexpected.
In short: The wizards at Pixar have done it again.
It's been 11 years since we hung out with Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Jessie the Cowgirl, Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head and the rest of the gang. Seeing them again is both nostalgic and exciting, like old friends come to visit after a lengthy absence.
The toys haven't changed much, of course. But their child, Andy, is all grown up and ready to leave for college. In the hubbub of moving out, the toys get put into the wrong bag and nearly are thrown out before the timely intervention of cowboy leader Woody (voice by Tom Hanks).
Instead, they end up donated to Sunnyside, a daycare center that at first looks like toy heaven on earth. There's tons of toys already there, but also dozens of kids to play with them. Even though, like Andy, the children will grow up and grow bored with them, every year brings a new batch.
"No owners means no heartbreak," intones Lotso (a terrific Ned Beatty), the cuddly old bear -- his name is short for Lots-o-Huggin' -- who runs the show at Sunnyside.
Woody, though, wants the gang to return to Andy so they can "be there for him," even if that means being consigned to the attic for awhile. And it turns out daycare has a nasty pecking order straight out of Orwell's "Animal Farm."
I guess some toys are created more equal than others.
One of the main subplots involves Barbie (Jodi Benson) being introduced to Ken (Michael Keaton). They were literally made for each other, of course, but in their universe they've never met before and instantly fall in love. Though Barbie does have reservations about Ken being Lotso's right-hand toy -- not to mention having an obsession with fashion accessories that's unbecoming even for the original boy toy.
Buzz (Tim Allen) kind of gets shunted to the side in this outing, though an accident triggers some special powers even he didn't know he had.
Mr. Potato Head is sent on a mission that involves detaching all his limbs, eyes, mouth, etc. and using other objects as a temporary host for his consciousness. This has all sorts of metaphysical implications begging for a serious philosophy dissertation: Does the soul reside in the heart? Or the mustache?
"Toy Story 3" is a great new adventure with a grand old gang, and I for one would love to have another -- just don't make us wait another 11 years for it.
I do have to add a note of caution: Despite the G rating, the film contains a scene of genuine terror, when it appears the toys will meet their doom, that may prove disturbing to little ones. Several tykes at the screening I attended visibly recoiled -- heck, I got a bit of the shivers. All kidding aside, a PG probably would've been more appropriate.
Also, "Toy Story 3" is preceded by a 6-minute animated short, "Day & Night." It's a fun little diversion about two creatures whose bodies are windows to the same scene at different times of day. But I'd say it was done mostly for the amusement of the animators who created it, and isn't up to the usual, high standard for Pixar shorts.
Let's play a game: Quick! Name a current male film sex symbol who is blond!
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......
.........
Nothing?
Don't worry, you're not just drawing a blank: These days, Hollywood's notion of handsome invariably means dark.
(Tall is good, too, though movie stars tend to be shorter than you'd think. But that's another column.)
Alright, you've had another minute -- still haven't come up with a towheaded star who sets the girls' (and some boys') hearts aflutter?
That's because there aren't any.
And no, we're not counting Robert Redford or Steve McQueen. I said a modern movie star, meaning their heyday is 2010, not 1970.
If you guessed Brad Pitt: Thanks for playing, but you lose. Although he's worn blond wigs or dye jobs for the occasional role ("Troy," "Legends of the Fall") the reigning embodiment of male beauty has a naturally brown head. (Check the eyebrows, they don't lie.)
As a film critic and owner of flaxen vestigial fur, I've long been dismayed by the dearth of actors who are considered sexy and also happen to look like me. (Well, except with good cheekbones and a strong chin.)
On a primal level, it's discomfiting that celluloid depictions of the panoply of human diversity leave me feeling marginalized. One thinks: Where am I? Don't I matter?
It may sound strange for an Aryan type to claim solidarity with African-Americans and other minorities who have long cried foul about movies reflecting them poorly, or not at all.
But with year after year of George Clooneys, Will Smiths, Johnny Depps, Tom Cruises and other pigment-blessed stars taking turns dominating the box office, I'm starting to wonder if Hollywood and the movie-going public have it in for blonds.
(Quick aside: The proper usage is to say "blonde" for women and "blond" for men, it being one of the few English terms that has feminine and masculine forms. Although many people, including me, mistakenly use the extra "e" for everybody.)
I'd almost grown resigned to the fact that when any given actor is held up as the new model of desirability, he would always have brown or black hair. But in recent years, things have grown even worse.
On the rare occasions when blond men do appear in popular films, they fall into one of three highly stereotyped roles: The goofball, the gay pal, or the psycho.
Owen Wilson and Will Ferrell typify the first pigeonhole: Guys who butter their bread with comedy, dancing for their dinner by playing the fool. To put it bluntly: We are not meant to take them seriously.
It's notable that Wilson, despite being quite good-looking in dude-ish way, has never played a romantic lead.
When it comes time to portray a (usually minor) character as effeminate, it's no coincidence that he's usually fair-haired. Look to the backgrounds and throwaway jokes of mainstream movies, and you'll see a lot of blond guys expressing over-the-top gay mannerisms.
The last category is the scariest (literally).
When sadistic killers occupy the screen, respected actors like Stanley Tucci ("The Lovely Bones") and Robin Williams ("One Hour Photo") love to trade in their dark locks for pale ones.
Sometimes it seems like the nastier the murderer, the blonder he gets: Look at the rash of nearly colorless killers such as the twin assassins in "The Matrix Reloaded," Jake Busey's religious bomber in "Contact" or Paul Bettany's killer monk from "The Da Vinci Code."
Although there have been some rugged midcentury blonds to grace film -- McQueen, Alan Ladd, Van Johnson -- almost from the dawn of cinema, dark hair has been associated with manliness and virility. Blonds have been relegated to the role of "the other."
The bias may have some basis in nascent film technology: Black-and-white cinema had a high amount of contrast in its early decades, so blond hair would tend to get washed out against lighter backgrounds. Similarly, those with pale eyebrows have a harder time projecting their facial expressions, especially to the back of the theater.
And the brutal truth is that, when it comes to commonly held standards of male attractiveness, most women just prefer dark hair.
Consider this from someone calling themselves Hairwatcher in an online chat: "It's something about the way the dark hair frames the face, giving it more presence. The eyebrows being dark also make them more pronounced, which emphasizes the eyes and all of this makes the face look stronger."
So the sad (for us blonds) conclusion may be that Hollywood is simply giving audiences what they want.
Still, that doesn't completely explain the way yellowheads are routinely dissed and dismissed at the movies.
Recently, brown-haired actor Chris Evans was cast in the lead role for 2011's "Captain America" movie, despite the comic book hero's alter-ego Steve Rogers always being drawn with platinum locks. This is old hat for Evans, who previously turned another blond super-hero, Johnny Storm -- aka The Human Torch -- to the dark side in the "Fantastic Four" flicks.
For me, the final straw was when they turned on Ken.
Or rather, when they turned Ken.
In its eagerly awaited film "Toy Story 3" hitting theaters May 18, the animation geniuses at Pixar have taken the inexplicable step of transforming the Ken doll -- y'know, of Barbie & Ken? -- into a brunette.
Despite decades of iconic blondness -- with that distinctive molded plastic hairstyle that looked like it'd been combed with a push broom -- Ken has gone to a coppery brown for his big screen debut.
Of course, Ken has always been a bit swishy, with a thing for brightly-hued scarves that was positively metrosexual before they even invented that term.
Oh, and he lacks genitalia. That fits, since Hollywood treats blond humans with a penis as if they didn't have one.
Only Pixar, the animation studio behind "Finding Nemo" and "Wall·E," could produce a movie about a cranky, lonely old man and make it both an artistic and commercial hit.
Carl Fredricksen (voice by Ed Asner), the protagonist of "Up," has the world's sourest attitude. His beloved wife Ellie passed away some years ago, and all he really cares about in the world is the ramshackle home they shared for decades -- which is about to bulldozed for some high-rise construction.
So Carl hooks a million balloons to his house and floats it away. His goal is to navigate to Paradise Falls, the mysterious land where Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer) -- the famous explorer who was his and Ellie's childhood hero -- disappeared long ago.
But it turns out that Carl has a stowaway: Russell (Jordan Nagai), a young Wilderness Explorer (think Cub Scout) obsessed with getting his last merit badge. Soon after landing in Paradise Falls, Carl and Russell are joined by Dug, a hyper dog with a gizmo collar that allows him to talk.
Director and co-writer Pete Docter ("Monsters, Inc.") layers the goofy antics in with some genuinely touching melodramatic moments. Like many Pixar films, "Up" is best appreciated by grown-ups.
Extra features are pretty good for the DVD version, but really take off in the Blu-ray edition (a combo DVD/Blu-ray pack is available).
The DVD comes with a commentary track by Docter and co-director Bob Peterson, alternate scenarios for the death of Muntz, a documentary on the filmmakers' journey to South America's Tepuis mountains for inspiration, and "Partly Cloudy," the short film that preceded "Up" in its theatrical release.
The Blu-ray has a host of features, including conceptual drawings of the major characters and canine companions, how the animators made Carl's house fly, and even how they carefully designed the interior and exterior of his house. Plus, a digital copy of the film for uploading to a portable device.
"Up" doesn't soar to the same heights as "Finding Nemo" or "Wall·E," but it's another triumph from Pixar Animation -- and another cartoon that will likely be appreciated more by adults than their offspring.
When I first saw previews for "Up," it looked like a short film about a crotchety old man who takes his house to the skies via a cloud of helium balloons, with a tubby Boy Scout as stowaway.
A delightful concept, to be sure, but how could they sustain such a fanciful notion over more than 90 minutes?
The simple answer is, they don't. Or rather, they don't try to.
The oldster reaches his destination fairly early in the movie. It's the adventures he has after he's gotten where he thought he was going that constitute the story's real heart.
Carl Fredricksen's life has been something of a disappointment. In the enchanting opening sequence, he meets Ellie as boy and girl. They're both fans of Charles Muntz, the famous explorer who disappeared into the South American veldt. They vow to follow in his footsteps, and build their house at the foot of Paradise Falls, a primordial enclave.
But life has its curveballs to throw, and after they are grown and married, Ellie and Carl keep getting distracted, and quotidian disasters like blown tires and fallen trees deplete their adventure fund. Carl, old and tired, finally lays Ellie to rest, crossing his heart to keep his promise and travel to Paradise Falls, alone.
Or at least so he thought. It turns out that Russell (Jordan Nagai), a young Wilderness Explorer looking for his final merit badge, has tagged along, and gets caught up in the adventure. Russell has faced his own setbacks, such as a mostly absent father, but he's too full of boyish exuberance to be weighed down by it. They're kindred souls, 70 years apart.
Now, you can't really tie a million balloons to the base of a fireplace and float a house away, much less navigate it with clotheslines rigged with ropes. But it's easy to swallow this bit of illogic, since the house acts as a metaphor for lost dreams.
"Up" was directed by Pete Docter, who also helmed the wonderful "Monsters, Inc.," and was co-directed by Bob Peterson, who also shared script duties with Docter. Peterson also provides the engaging vocals of Dug, a dog who's been outfitted with a high-tech collar that translates his hyper thoughts into spoken words.
Ed Asner gives a terrific vocal performance as Carl. It's not easy to make a sour-pussed elderly man with a walker into a likable character, but Asner and the filmmakers do it. Perhaps it's because we get to see the hopeful, somewhat meek Carl before he became a widower, and understand how that loss subtracts from his soul.
Children will enjoy the high-flying action and host of goofy animals, but I suspect that like "Wall·E," "Up" is a film that will reverberate more deeply with those whose faces have some lines in them. Pixar has gone beyond making entertainment, and is using animation to create serious cinematic art. High hopes, indeed.
In terms of the quality of animation, we’ve reached the point where DreamWorks and Pixar are in a virtual dead heat. Pixar films (“Finding Nemo”) have traditionally looked better, but with “Kung Fu Panda” and now “Monsters vs. Aliens”, the underdogs have closed the gap.
“Monsters” is simply marvelous to gaze upon, particularly if you happen to catch it one of the theaters playing it in 3-D. There’s a density to the images, with an almost tactile feel, like they exist rather than are drawn. The action scenes are clear and smooth, and even the smallest background details seem to have been labored over.
But as storytellers, the DreamWorks folks are still understudies.
The best way to put it is this: DreamWorks animation is made to be entertainment, while Pixar animation is intended as art. “WALL·E” and its like go beyond cute characters and kid-friendly hijinks. They have something to say, and say it in a way that’s subtle and inventive.
With DreamWorks, any point to be made culminates in a single moment that practically announces itself: “And the moral of the story is…”
In “Monsters,” it’s when Susan, a woman who’s been turned into a 50-foot colossus, realizes that she’s been living her life through others – specifically, her smarmy, ambitious TV weatherman husband. When Susan declares she doesn’t need him anymore, it feels like a teachable moment aimed at children rather than an emotional epiphany.
Another distinction is that DreamWorks seems to go out of its way to cast only stars for its vocal performances, whereas Pixar finds the best voice actors to match the part, whether they’re famous or not. (Consider “WALL·E”: Sigourney Weaver is the only name actor, and she plays the ship’s computer.)
In “Monsters vs. Aliens,” virtually every major speaking part is done by a star. Reese Witherspoon is Susan, also known as Ginormica after a radioactive meteorite lands on her on her wedding day, leading to big developments at the altar. Kiefer Sutherland plays the tough old general who commands the secret military facility where all the monsters captured by the government are held. Rainn Wilson of “The Office” plays the many-tentacled villain, Gallaxhar.
This isn’t to say stars do a bad job. Seth Rogen is a hoot as B.O.B., a brainless, blobulous entity with a single eye that he often spits out and tosses around like a ball. (He was created during an experiment combining a tomato with a dessert topping.) And Will Arnett is amusingly guttural as Missing Link (just “Link” to his friends), a reptilian strongman.
Rounding out the team are Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), a scientist who accidentally turned himself into a garbage-loving bug, and Insectosaurus, a 350-foot grub.
When a giant robot is sent to Earth by Gallaxhar, the monsters are called out to save the day. Susan joins in to gain her freedom, since all she wants to do is return to her home in Modesto. But soon Gallaxhar himself, plus his army of cloned selves, arrives to finish the job.
The action scenes are high-spirited and well-staged, and there are a few nice gags here and there. The president (Stephen Colbert), ensconced in his “Dr. Strangelove”-esque bunker, orders his lackeys: “We need our top scientific minds on this. Get me India on the phone!”
But in the end, “Monsters vs. Aliens” is merely a well-done bit of entertainment for kids. Nothing wrong with that – but when your competition is “WALL·E,” it’s a long way to second place.
