Toy Story 3

Ratings: 7.8/10

Genre: Animation

Overall value for time and money: 7.5/10

Never really did like the previous two prequels of Toy Story. Personally, I thought of them to be Pixar's weakest.. even though they are like the Pioneers of Pixar animation. After checking out the incredibly convincing ratings on imdb.com, and how many have claimed it to be one of Pixar's greatest works and how it overshadows its prequels, I decided to give it a try.

Andy's favourite Toys convinces themselves that even though Andy is all grown-up and going to college, he would never desert them. However, things took a turn when they were accidentally disposed off... thankfully the situation was salvaged but things took another turn when they were unintentionally donated to a daycare centre. They thought they had finally found another home but of course... things didn't turn out as they had hoped.

Toy Story 3 was indeed, better than its prequels. But it wasn't awesome. I realise Pixar animations were never perfect, ok I admit I might be expecting too much here but here's my 3 cents worth of thinking. Finding Nemo was the nearest perfect Pixar animation because the starting was good, buildup was captivating, filled with original and stomach -aching humor throughout and of course it also ended with a bang. Up was almost there, with a tear-dropping moment near the start of the film, but it went downhilled with the introduction of the talking dogs. Well, the same is true for Toy Story 3.

The starting wasn't too impressive... almost felt extremely childish, yet not involving enough. It was childish-like, but I'm sure the kids weren't too hyped up about the starting as well. *spoilers ahead*. But things got a ted better as the story unfolded. Towards the end, I was reminded of all the times I played with my action figures when I was much younger and how they are, my favourites, kept away in my cupboard. It was a moment I could relate to, even though I know action figures don't have a life.

The humor wasn't that good, the barbie and ken screen-time didn't amuse me that much but there were a couple of scenes which did had me laughing off my seat (figuritively speaking). There was this one particularly scene where hope seemed all lost, which reminded me of of a scene in Spongebob Squarepants Movie that really did have me heave a sigh of relief after and resulted in half of the cinema clapping. As I've said, the movie got better as it progressed but it unfortunately didn't reach a point which really swept me off my feet. The soundtrack "You've got a friend in me" sounded too oldschool and matured to be played during such a film for me.

Even the higly awaited pre-animation wasn't as good as Up (the one with the clouds). This time it featured 2 ghostly transparent beings which could allow us to experience different scenes through their bodies, either night or day. Unlike the previous pre-animations, the message was more direct since they actually laid it out through the voices which came from the radio transmissions. Graphic was 2D-like which reminded of Casper the friendly ghost. Out of all the short animations, I loved the Cloud the most, followed by the Magician and the Bunny and finally the one with the Sheep.