MARKED MOVIES

Director: Lee Unkrich.
Screenplay: Michael Arndt.
Voices: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Ned Beatty, Michael Keaton, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, R. Lee Ermey, Estelle Harris, Jodi Benson, John Morris, Laurie Metcalf, Timothy Dalton, Bonnie Hunt, Richard Kind, Whoopi Goldberg.

This is most likely the last adventure we’ll have with our plastic and stuffed little friends. So, it’d be wise to lap it up and enjoy it as much as you can. Thankfully, that’s not very hard to do with this wonderfully adventurous final
installment.

This time around, Andy is now 17yrs old, meaning that his old and faithful toys Woody, Buzz, etc. are now relegated to an old box and have not been played with for years. During a clearout before Andy leaves for college, the gang are mistaken for a bag of trash and left for the dumpster. Having escaped this minor mishap, all but Woody agree to be donated to a children’s daycare centre, where they will be valued and adored by kids other than Andy. Once at the daycare centre though, all doesn’t turn out as planned. It is controlled and run like a prison by a jealousy fuelled and tyrannical bear who has been abandoned by his previous owner, leaving Woody to rescue his old chums from their incarceration.

Pixar, yet again, manage to balance their film perfectly for the audience. Like the previous films, it appeals to both adults and children, which is probably the hardest task it had in being successful again. Without taking away from the familiar ones, the story is fleshed out with additional joyous characters, namely, the inclusion of a shallow Barbie & a dark and scheming Ken, to hilarious results. There is also a wonderful little homage to “Cool Hand Luke” when the toys are told if they step out of line they’ll “spend a night in the box”. Visually, it’s outstanding. The animators have really excelled themselves and it should be seen in glorious Imax 3D, to fully appreciate it’s intricate beauty.

A wonderfully exciting treat for all and several of cinema’s best little characters will be sorely missed, but in the words of Randy Newman’s recurrent song…Toy Story’s “got a friend in me”.

Mark Walker

This entry was posted on January 14, 2012 at 9:23 pm and is filed under Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family with tags 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.