For a while I always thought that you can’t ever take away your sense of youth. I was never quite sure that I had properly grown up. Yes, I am a relatively mature person for my age but I always felt like I had many childish qualities that I thought might never disappear. Last night, I went to see Toy Story 3. Having waited months to see this and having had a bit of time to take it all in, I think that my childhood has officially ended.
Monday 19th July at 9:10pm, to be more precise. For the previous two hours me, my girlfriend and a friend of ours had sat down in our seats in a screening that wasn’t bursting with people (because I think, unlike us, everyone went to see the 3D version and also since the heat may have put off cinema-goers that evening) to witness the end of an era. When the original Toy Story came out, I was only six years old. When its sequel came out, I was eleven. My age has doubled since then and this film not only felt like an end to a superb trilogy but also the end of childhood and adolescence and the beginning of acting like a ‘real person’.
About the film itself, without giving away any key plot spoilers, if you loved the previous two installments of the franchise, you will love this too. I found it to be on an equal par with the previous two and agree with Mark Kermode when he says that it’s the best movie trilogy of all time. It’s very hard to think of others that have had such an outstanding (not to mention outstandingly consistent) triplet of films. I mean, even Star Wars’ legacy got screwed over by its creator with the unnecessary prequels. The fact that this happens to be an animated trilogy aimed at all the family is merely a sidenote, although it is funny how things turned out.
Its themes are also pretty dark, even for a film aimed at kids. Death, the discarding of toys, separation, moving on…quite tough subject matters. But Pixar are masters of storytelling and do so in a way that doesn’t feel too dumbed down for adults but also doesn’t feel too sinister and bleak for kids. However, nothing will prepare you for the film’s conclusion. Without giving anything away, the last ten-fifteen minutes will probably make you cry like a baby who has lost his/her rattle or at the very least well up with tears.
So long Toy Story. So long my childhood.
