Toy Story 3 (2010) Director: Lee Unkrich

Typically at this point in a film series, the story becomes tired, the characters uninteresting, and the production loses its overall quality. However Toy Story 3 remains a delightful and sentimental film, like its two predecessors.

★★★★★

It tells the story of an older Andy who goes away to college, while his toy collection is donated to a daycare center where they build a happy new life at first, but the kids soon become burdensome and abusive. Woody discovers that the daycare center is actually being run like a prison by the head toy, a bear named Lotso. So he leads the toys on a mission to escape through the trash and eventually back to Andy’s home. In a tearjerking end to the film, Woody writes a note to Andy making it appear to be written by his mother. In the end, Andy donates his toys to Bonnie, a younger girl, saying a final goodbye to Woody before he drives away. Barbie decides to stay at Sunnyside daycare center with her new lover Ken, as well as the toy army soldiers.

The build-up to the production of the film was contentious, as negotiations nearly floundered between Disney and Pixar. After an agreement was reached, animators returned to their initial work on Toy Story and discovered they were no longer able to open the software models, causing them to recreate the animation of the characters. As is typical of Pixar films, upon its theatrical release it was accompanied by a short creative film featuring a fictional meeting of “Day” and “Night.” Toy Story 3 was the first animated film to gross over $1B. It was TIME magazines top film of 2010, as well as Quentin Tarantino’s. Once again, Randy Newman created the soundtrack. The film, of course, features an incredible all-star cast: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Don Rickles, among many others.