Pun Salad

As I type, Toy Story 3 is #6 on IMDB's top 250 movies of all time. Usually I scoff. For this, I say: "Yeah, maybe so." Dare I say masterpiece? Sure. It's as good as Pixar gets, which means it's up around 98th percentile or higher. Go see it. We sprung for the 3-D version; neat, fun, but I don't think you'd miss that much if you wanted to save some dough and go 2-D. You Neanderthal skinflint.

The plot: the toys' owner, Andy, is about to go off to college, and hasn't played much with his old mates for a number of years. What is to be their fate? The attic? eBay? Donated? Or headed to certain oblivion in a curbside trash bag? No spoilers here, but mixups place our favorite animated inanimate objects in peril of one sort or another throughout the entire movie. They handle themselves with impressive displays of courage, teamwork, and resourcefulness, while musing on the virtue of loyalty vs. their craving for a purposeful existence. Really. Even these guys play a pivotal role:

Ah, I smile every time they're onscreen. Love those little green dudes.

I was a little wrung out at the end. For its G rating, it's intense and slightly dark. But it's also very funny and moving. Those Pixar guys continue to be utter geniuses at spinning stories you can't help but be caught up in.

They also have plenty of old-fashioned smarts. My favorite bit of IMDB trivia:

At one point in the film, Mr. Potato Head scurries across a toy piano. The notes the piano plays are the "Petrushka chord," a recurring motif from a ballet composed by Stravinsky about a puppet who comes to life.

Did I say 98th percentile? Make it 99.5.

Consumer note: we went last night, a Wednesday, to avoid the crowds. We didn't realize that it was the opening night for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. We walked past a line that—I swear—contained a couple hundred young girls and (as near as I could tell) just one guy. That's demographics for ya.