The Toy Story Trilogy

I must say that was not the best Academy Awards I have ever seen. Anne Hathaway seemed more like the cool babysitter you might be lucky enough to get when you are seven, but James Franco just stood there like an idiot. He closed his eyes halfway whenever he spoke, and his jokes were not nearly close enough to Funny Or Die material. While I should be blaming these lifeless robots for a poor showing on TV, I actually must blame ABC for their terrible performance. ABC had been building up this award show for the last several weeks and it turns out the commercials were funnier then the show itself. That's what happened with The Expendables, awful film. Anywho, in honor of the night's most respected recipient, Randy Newman, I present you with a review of the Toy Story 3 trilogy: The Abridged Version. (Not a chance in hell I'm spending 3 hours to review each movie individually).

The Toy Story series follows Woody and Buzz, two talking toys, who go on a series of wild adventures, all in the name of their owner Andy. Throughout the series, we are introduced to characters like Mr. Potato Head (Don Rickles), Slinky (Blake Clark), Hamm (John Ratzenberger), and Jessie (Joan Cusack).

In the first Toy Story, Woody (Tom Hanks), Andy's most beloved toy is jealous of the new toy, Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen). In an act of jealousy, Woody fakes Buzz's death to regain Andy's affection, but in the end becomes best friends with Buzz. The first movie definitely tried to emphasise the friendship piece, but not just with Buzz and Woody. The relationship between Andy and his toys are just as strong.

In the second film, we are introduced to Jessie. Woody finds out he is a collectors item and is mistakenly given to a collector. Woody realizes just how much he needs his family of toys, so I think the main message of this film was appreciating what you have.

The third installment finds Andy going off to college and contemplating giving his toys away, hmphh some friend. The toys get taken to a nursery home where they believe they will be played with carefully, but they find the children to be little devils. Totally put me off from wanting to have kids for a good four months. By far the most badass of all the films, this one ends in a real cliffhanger, actually everything gets sorted out so there isn't much of a cliff or a hanger. Purpose is by far the dominating theme in this film.

If Pixar animated films was a crime syndicate, Toy Story would be the Godfather. This is pretty much the movie that started a revolution of Pixar movies. It also started a generation of terrified children who believed their toys came to live after they left for school. I was one of them, but I thought they wanted to kill me like Chucky cause I never picked them up. I thought I was like Andy, but if I was a toy I would hate me too. I used to leave Lego's outside in the winter and wait for the snow to melt to find them. Obviously I'm no Sid, but that's pretty brutal.

The Toy Story Saga also gave us some pretty classic friendship tunes, compliments of my boy and newly awarded Oscar winner Randy Newman. I always felt like Randy was the kind of musician that everyone else in entertainment never took seriously until he started doing big things, like Rain Man. Randy Newman is like Rain Man. "You've Got a Friend in Me" is to this day my favorite movie song ever. Newman is so simple with his lyrics, but he gives such a punch. Forget that he sounds like one of the bosses from Star Fox, the man is a musical genius. But seriously, I think every animated movie has a song by Ra-New.

I grew up with Toy Story. It's been apart of my life and taught me to never neglect my roots. That's what Toy Story really is trying to tell us; we have our new connections and our computers and cell phones, but let's just remember the days when everything was simple and our toys were our best friends. And then Facebook came.