Lee Unkrich’s Toy Story 3

NOTE TO SELF: Show up minimum of ten minutes late to animated features. Horrendously-bad trailers such as for Alpha and Omega leave bad scarring in the brain. Instead use that time for Sudoku to repair mental retardation. END NOTE.

O you’ve come to visit me once again haven’t you – you spirit of delight! With the recent influx of lame to mediocre, computer-generated projects you have broken free! From gunk. From the wave of infant piss and condescension that is becoming family cinema. You have separated yourself like cream over raw sewage. But I have to ask myself why are you so much better? Is there something in the water over there at PIXAR?

I think your freshness is the key. Films like Twilight and Avatar have taken movie tropes and turned them into something even more contrived and weak-minded. But you take our memorabilia, our nostalgia, and you reinvent it. Make it fresh and shiny and hilarious again. I think what separates good films like you from mentally midgeted films like Avatar is simply – creativity. Avatar was an incredibly anti-creative film. It limped along on its technology-based spectacle and carpet bombing marketing. Luckily for Avatar American box offices do not hold films accountable for producing original ideas or novel story.

But I do and here is what I have to say – Toy Story 3 – you extend my creativity. You extend the audience’s imagination. And that is far beyond any expectations for the mainstream movies these days. And also not going to lie – by the end of you – not a dry eye in the house . . . $8