Saw Toy Story 3 - Laura cried

Laura sometimes has some trouble with Pixar movies. For the longest time, she wouldn't watch Toy Story 2 because of the scene were Jessie the Cowgirl is telling her story of being loved and abandoned by a little girl who grew up.

As a parent, it's hard to sit through those kind of things and not think about the inevitable day when your kid will grow up and shun the very things that they used to love. It's sometimes welcome and sometimes sad.

When Julia was just two or three years old, we watched Monsters Inc. on DVD. At some point in the movie near the end, which may have been the time when Sully says goodbye
to Boo, the girl from the human world, I looked over at Laura to see her bawling like a baby.

I laughed and asked, "What's wrong?"

She said through tears, "This is why I hate Pixar movies. They just SUCK you right in and make you cry!"

Laura eventually got over those two movies's sadder moments and now can watch them with no problem.

However, Laura knew Toy Story 3 was going to be a problem when a co-worker who had seen it mentioned to Laura that it was a great movie and that it was sad.

"Am I going to cry?" she asked.

"Yes."

So Laura was going into the movie expecting it to be sad and expecting to cry.

The movie starts off the bat with a downer of a premise. The toys are in the toy box and have been there for years it seems. They are all that's left of all of Andy's toys throughout the years. They even mention losing some toys, like Bo Peep, who was voiced by Annie Potts in the first two movies, to yard sales. Funny!

Then it's discussed that Andy is going away to college. His Mom is giving away his room to his little sister, so he has to decide what to do with his stuff: take to college, put in storage or trash. He puts Woody in the college stuff and puts the toys in with the attic stuff, but when the toys accidentally get put on the curb with the trash, Woody acts to save them. In the confusion, they end up in the daycare donation stuff.

When they get to the daycare, it looks like all their troubles are solved. They are told by Lotso, the purple bear that leads the daycare, that they'll have a never ending stream of toys to play with, but then things quickly turn for the worse when they are locked in the wing for toddlers, who are much rougher on the toys in the bigger kids room. The toys then have to break out of the day care, which is run like a prison at night.

Eventually, it all culminates with Andy having to say goodbye to his toys as he's leaving for college.

I looked over at Laura while this was happening and she was wiping her eyes. She knew I was going to be looking over at her and she laughed while crying and muttered, "Stupid Pixar."

All in all, it was a pretty good Toy Story movie. I wouldn't call it my favorite. It was pretty funny, but the scenes near the end were rather bleak. Maybe repeated viewings will spruce it up. It still ranks up there with the other ones though. It has a lot of great performances from Lotso to Ken, who spends a lot of time insisting that he's not a girl's toy while trying on tons of outfits.