In our Year in Review issue, our critics picked their favorite movies of 2010. While I can't authoritatively make such selections -- as the father of a 4-year-old boy, my moviegoing is limited to only films that include fart jokes -- I do have one noteworthy disappointment to voice.
In 2010, Pixar finally screwed the pooch.
No, Toy Story 3 is not a disasterous movie, nothing along the lines of a Shrek, but it is certainly a hollow effort in comparison to, well, any of Pixar's other titles. And as a Pixar believer from the very start, this made for a sad cinema event, one I had been fearing for 15 years -- when the studio that could do no wrong finally broke its golden run of awesomeness.
Clearly, this unnecessary sequel was made primarily to inflate Pixar's corporate bank account, and that's an unfortunate first. John Lasseter and company had once, long ago, vowed "no sequels!"--and had grudgingly made Toy Story 2 with the intent of releasing it straight to home video; it just happened to turn out so well that a theatrical release made sense. But that's not the case with Toy Story 3, which offers us nothing new except for an extremely misplaced sense of mortal dread. (Making kids see their favorite Toy Story characters give up their collective will to live, believing they're about to be burned alive, wasn't a bold, dramatic statement--it was a mistake.)
Meanwhile this year, Pixar's competitors finally managed to release digital animated features that were genuinely good--and original. Although Dreamworks couldn't resist milking the Shrek cow one more miserable time, it also released Megamind, with its entertaining anti-hero for the grade-school set, and How to Train Your Dragon, a sweet Viking tale. And Universal, with about half the budget of any of those movies, came out of nowhere with Despicable Me, which managed to make Steve Carell funny again. Do any of these titles stand up to Pixar's best? No, they don't deliver the same emotional heft--but they are beautifully designed and animated, and edging ever closer to Pixar's benchmarks.
Nevertheless, Pixar's 15-year run of classic or merely excellent animated features is an unparalleled accomplishment--it's just too bad they finally had to stumble while bearing such an important and beloved title.
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