(The Disneycember logo is shown, before showing clips from Toy Story 3)
Doug (vo): I didn’t cry at the end of Toy Story 3. Just throwing that out there. I know it seems strange to bring up, but with the way people react to this film, especially the ending, uh, I just felt that would be the important thing to hear before you listen to the rest of this. With that said, Toy Story 3, the final in the Toy Story trilogy. Everyone went nuts for this movie. They said it was emotional, they said it was funny, they said it was dark, they said it was creative, blah, blah, blah. They went crazy for it. I think it’s good. Yeah, you know. It’s good, uh... [An audience boos] Okay, okay, let’s just go into the story.
Story
Doug (vo): Andy, who’s now going to college, has to make a decision about whether or not he still wants to hold on to his toys. The toys, well aware of this, have to make a decision whether or not they want to hold on to Andy. Well, after a miscommunication, they figure that the best thing to do is probably to move on. They make their way to a day care center where they figure they can be enjoyed by children for years and years to come. The only problem is, the toy running the day care center seems to be a power-hungry control freak, who puts the toys in with kids who are not the appropriate age to be playing with. When they try to head back, the head toy imprisons them and makes sure that they can’t escape. And from there, all sorts of crazy situations happen. Woody tries to reconnect with his group, again. Barbie gets a new boyfriend with Ken, voiced by Michael Keaton. Buzz is reprogrammed to be evil, much to the dismay of his new girlfriend Jessie. And the toys try to figure out what’s the best route to go, stay with Andy, stay with the day care center, or some other alternative.
Review
Doug (vo): The funny thing about Toy Story 3 is that, really, this should be my favorite. It goes everywhere I wanted the Toy Story movies to go. After the second one created such a good dilemma, I said to myself, "The next one should be about what happens when Andy actually does grow up." And that’s exactly what happens. It’s also the darkest of the movies. It has probably some of the scariest images and some of the most intense moments. Certainly the heaviest on the drama. They continue to do the great toy jokes, I mean, the stuff with Ken is hilarious. All your favorite characters are there, well, most of them. Bo Peep sort of gets insultingly side-lined.
Woody: We've lost friends along the way.
Rex: Bo Peep?
Woody: Yeah. Even, even Bo.
Doug (vo): Ah, screw the bitch. Moving on. And once again, we have a legitimate threat that does have a backstory that makes him sort of credible. So why don’t I like this one as much as I like the other two, especially when everyone else in the world seems to regard it as a masterpiece? I don’t know. Maybe there’s too much focus on them trying to get out. Maybe the day care center is a little too ugly a place, not fun to really be around, which I know they’re taking a darker turn, but the second one sort of did, too, and it was still enjoyable. When I think of this movie, I think of a lot of grays and greens and yellows, they’re just not very pleasant. I could have used a few more jokes and maybe not quite as much drama, or, well, maybe if they just balanced it out a little bit more.
[The ending of the movie is shown]
Doug (vo): And, okay, I’ll address the elephant in the room. I think the ending is corny. Again, without giving away too much, this is the ending that everybody cries at, everyone gets emotional for it, everybody sees their childhood in this scene. I’m gonna sound like a cold-hearted bastard, but I was kind of snickering. I can see a nostalgic grown man acting this way. I can see even a little child acting this way. But the way Andy acts as a college kid, I think most of us have been that age. We remember what we were like, and most of us are not this clingy nostalgic yet, at least, not to this degree. Don’t get me wrong, we go through it. We all go through it. I still can’t believe I gave away all my Ninja Turtles toys. What the hell? Those were life! But that’s the thing. I still gave them away. Think about when you gave away your toys. Was it really this heartbreaking? Probably not. This stuff happens when you’re much older. And when you’re around this age, you don’t have as many concerns about the past. This is more for, like, a mid-life crisis. Now if the point came where he had to give the toys away and he paused for a second, maybe that would have been more powerful. Maybe if he just gave a second look and then decided to hand them over. But, good Lord. He goes through every toy, has a description for every single one of them, talks to them like they were individual people. What a dweeb! If you knew a college kid who did this, you’d probably stay the fuck away from him, and with a level of seriousness he was saying it with, you’d probably keep him away from your kids, too.
Final thought
Doug (vo): So, there. I stated the moment that I’m sure will give me a ton of hate mail, so, of course, you must think I don’t like this film. Well, no. I still think it’s a very, very good film. In fact, I actually do think it’s a great way to end the Toy Story trilogy. It does go darker, it does address the moment that it was building up in the other films, it does have a very satisfactory conclusion. It’s just a little indulgent at times, at least for my taste. But it still has my favorite characters, it still has a lot of good laughs, it has, surprisingly, a lot of suspense, and, hey, it’s still Toy Story. And for a lot of people, this represents something that they grew up with as children, and maybe that’s why so many people do react the way they do at the very end. A lot of kids were Andy’s age when the first Toy Story came out, so to watch themselves grow up and to watch the films actually grow up with them as well probably mirrors a lot of developments that a lot of people in the audience have gone through. Maybe, in the end, that’s Toy Story’s great secret. It knew just when to come out and it knew just when to stop. It reached just the right age bracket and decided to grow up with us. And for those who didn’t grow up around the same age, maybe Toy Story brought them back to that age. Maybe they hit something that not only do we all remember, but we all hold so precious and close to us. Whatever Toy Story did, it did it well, so well that people are going to continue to show it to their kids for generations and generations. It’s a good series of films to be introduced to, and it’s a great nostalgic series to look back on.
[The final scene is shown again as the camera rises up to the cloudy sky, mirroring Andy's former room with clouds on the wall]