And that's all good, this is supposed to be a kids' movie. Now obviously I take no personal issue with this 25-year-old woman's opinion, nor that of anyone who enjoyed the movie, but it does bring into sharper focus a pretty major point of contention: who is Toy Story 3 actually for? The target audience of the vast majority of the gags seems to be young kids, and the same can be said of the tone of the dialog and the lack of nuance in the plot. Bonnie understands how to play with them as Andy did-using her imagination. This is what makes Andy's giving his beloved toys to Bonnie feel so right (although it's still rather sad). Somehow Pixar makes a kid's playtime interesting and fun-even for those of us who, sadly, don't get the enjoyment out of playing anymore. I also loved the scenes at Bonnie's house, when she is playing with her toys. It's a long and sloppy review, but here's the relevant snippet: Not long ago, I came across a "user review" of the film that, while positive, actually did a great job of encapsulating my feelings about the theme of Toy Story 3. That said, I've always found it hard to clarify exactly what I so actively disliked about the movie. It's not as if the production was completely without merit-the color script, though pretty pedestrian, was extremely effective in establishing mise-en-scène, a few sight gags (Woody's floppy gait and the whole tortilla bit) were great fun, and I admit to batting an eye or two at the ending-but making the least bad of all CGI movies just doesn't cut it for me anymore. Though the film was paced efficiently enough, I found a lot of the character motivations and plot details to be really confusing and unnatural 2, the gags and jokes completely canned and insincere, and the art and animation to be almost totally unremarkable. Over the last few years I've fallen hard out of love with Pixar: the more I learn about film, cartooning, and animation the more I find many of the decisions they make hard to swallow, or at least pretty highly unpalatable. It's important for me to note that I am uppity enough that I probably wouldn't have cared for the movie regardless of any kind of philosophical objection to it. That disconnect only deepens my frustration with positive reactions to the movie not because I feel I've got something to prove (I do) but because I honestly begin to fear that they're right, that I really have grown too bitter and cynical to enjoy something so pure as a sequel to Toy Story, a movie I was out-of-my-mind crazy for when I was a kid. I usually perceive myself more-or-less as a childish ninny, and though I don't wish for this essay to be too self-effacing (read: arrogant and melodramatic) I have to mention that I frequently find myself at odds with a culture in which I'm told that it's immature to continue to seek the visceral pleasure of climbing trees, in which the meaning of the word "party" is so hideously transmogrified in the years between adolescence and adulthood. The movie's acclaim was pretty much universal, and pretty much all of the small number of negative reviews were clumsily written and hideously argued, apparently by people who actually managed not to understand the movie. When I told people I disliked the film, they 1 told me that I must somehow be lacking in imagination or spirit, and reminded me of the way the franchise speaks to their inner child. In June of last year, around the height of the buzz surrounding Toy Story 3, I got alarmingly used to being called heartless.
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