Toy Story 3 (2010)

Although a number of movie sequels have been better than the original number--Bride of Frankenstein, Ivan the Terrible Part II, The Empire Strikes Back, The Wrath of Khan, The Dark Knight, and of course Toy Story 2--this is possibly the only #3 which is better than the original. Maybe this is because Toy Story 3 is under no obligation to remain in the same genre as its predecessors; in fact, the bulk of the movie is a pastiche of the classic prison-break film (with special reference to Cool Hand Luke), with healthy borrowings from the James Bond and Star Wars series. To the filmmakers' credit, these references never reach the cynical, empty allusiveness of other Disney movies, most notoriously that of Robin Williams' Genie in Aladdin. Rather, the creators seems as enamored of "movie magic" as the rest of us; witness the countless small touches that populate the mise-en-scène: Buzz Lightyear's walk, Barbie and Ken's wardrobe, the texture of a toy's yarn-hair, or the way that garbage bags are accorded much more verisimilitude than the human face. While Pixar's Wall-E was endlessly compared to Chaplin and Keaton silent films, Toy Story 3 cries out for remarks about the influence of Kubrick and Welles, masters of the painstakingly conceived minor detail.

Like the robot protagonist in Wall-E, the Toy Story films are simultaneously high-tech digital products and bearers of an imperiled, almost corny humanism, a paradox which is also a variation on the familiar media/message dialectic. On one hand, here is a series of films whose protagonist is a quaint, stitched-together cowboy doll, Woody--a relic of 1950s culture which cites Roy Rogers, Howdy Doody, and Gunsmoke--while on the other hand, the animation is produced using the most advanced 21st century computer technology by Pixar, the brainchild of Apple Computer's Steve Jobs. But at this point perhaps the paradox dissolves; after all, Apple's products really are meant to be cradled, cherished, treated like one of the family. And, once they are superseded in their technology, they don't become "obsolete"--like classic toys, they too become kitsch. But is this to say that the Toy Story films are basically feature length versions of the (already adorable and charming) Apple commercials that screen on TV or in the banners of our favorite websites?

I mention all of this, not to condemn the Toy Story films as subliminal purveyors of consumer culture, reconciling us to commodity fetishism under the premise of children's entertainment, but rather because the films are so smart that they have already envisioned and inverted this criticism. Instead of a fruitless "critique" of consumer culture and materialism--one which will in any case continue to be pursued by a spellbound postmodernism--the films eschew dwelling on what is, philosophically, a naive appropriation of facticity, and, entertainment-wise, not very promising. Toy Story instead shows how our objects think us through, or even--this is Marx's sense of "commodity fetishism"--do our thinking in our place, in the way this very "material" takes on unconsciously metaphysical, fanciful properties in the margins and traces of its movement through our social lives.

Of course, as a basic allegory, Toy Story 3 is about not about toys; it is about "us"--our culture of shoving the dying, aged, and useless out of sight. There is a unmistakable, poignant perversity in representing the plight of human mortality and aging through children's toys. At this level, it is staggeringly powerful, and I was very glad to be wearing the 3-D sunglasses when the movie was over, to hide eyes that were very red from crying. I won't make myself ridiculous by waxing on about the "complexity" of the movie's villain, a pinkish-mauve Lots-o'-Huggin stuffed bear (memorably voiced by Ned Beatty) who smells like strawberries. "Lotso's" spurned, defensive villainy, which manifest itself only as cynical, equivocating self-preservation, is one of the triumphs of recent screenwriting. The cliché would be to laud its improvement over the Manichean idea of evil found in most children's movies, from Snow White to the Harry Potter movies, but of course we learned from No Country for Old Men that "pure evil" is anything but a simple consolation, safe only for children. The best moments in the film are parallel speeches about the disposable nature of human relationships; the first speech is greeted with warm approbation by the toys (and the audience), while the second is a horrific "unmasking," dramatically scored, which leads to Lotso's downfall. But the content of the "good" and the "bad" sides of Lotso is identical.

Ultimately, while Toy Story 3 is a great and moving film, the fate of the toys--the concluding message--is unsatisfactory. The allegory has to eventually collapse back into its ostensible subject, I suppose. In the last analysis, the toys have it easy: they are there to be played with. But here I can no longer find myself in the film. Woody (Tom Hanks) has his owner's name written on the sole of his boot: his destiny is marked. And while the difficulty of living up to that responsibility, and the vicissitudes of fidelity, make for great cinema, in life our destinies are never so clearly marked (not even in crayon). And here it returns to being a "kids movie"--children don't have *this* problem. The toys can't become... anything, other than what they are. On the other hand, this--becoming other than what one is--is the entire problematic of Pixar's The Incredibles. But it really isn't a theme that could be exhausted. That these questions have been almost entirely abdicated by serious cinema--say, by the empty, pretentious formalism of Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker-- and can only be smuggled in under the floorboards, as it were, of these Disney movies, is perhaps even more troubling than anything onscreen here.