LITTLE ROCK — In 1985, John Waters - the trash filmmaker - wrote a piece for Rolling Stone called “John Waters’ Tour of LA” in which he (among other things) described attending a matinee showing of The Care Bear Movie by himself:
“The ticket seller gave me a funny look, maybe it was my sunglasses. The usher tore my ticket and snapped, ‘This is a children’s movie, you know!’ The theater was filled with harried mothers and their kids, many of whom were clutching Cabbage Patch dolls. I was the only adult male by myself and people actually moved away from me. Lasting only 20 minutes or so, I rushed from the theater, filled with anxiety.”
I know the feeling. Mainly to satisfy my professional curiosity, I popped into an early showing of Toy Story 3 last week. The late-morning show was surprisingly sparsely attended, and I situated myself rows away from the daddies with kids (at this particular screening I didn’t see any mommies) and watched the whole thing. (OK, not quite the whole thing - I left during the credits to avoid what I expected would be dirty looks from parents.)
And it is nice little movie. Or rather, a nice big movie. It may make my year-end Top 10 list. It will probably be nominated for a lot of Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It is precisely what I thought it would be, an excellent, well-made movie for kids.
I like that it doesn’t - like some animated movies - insist on dropping in knowing cultural references in an effort to keep the adults engaged. And I don’t mind the filmmakers’ profligate use of brand-name toys (a nit some critics have picked).
Every movie exists to sell you something, and the specificity of the toys that surround the main characters Woody and Buzz Lightyear (characters original to the movies) is a hook sufficient to enlist the empathy of some viewers (largely adults) who have fond associations with the depicted brands. It wouldn’t be the same with generic toys.
Were I reviewing it - which I guess I am, in a way - I’d tell you it was wonderful. I wouldn’t have anything bad to say about it, really. Kids will love it and apparently adults susceptible to a certain kind of heartwarming, nostalgia-driven narrative will love it too.
I’ll go further: I’m glad Pixar exists. I think they are good people who make excellent, technically virtuosic movies. I wish someone would routinely take the same pains with character and story in movies aimed at an adult audience as Pixar takes crafting its fairy tales.
But there’s something about the reception that Toy Story 3 has received that bothers me.
So many putative adults have heaped so much outlandish praise on the film - I’ve heard it called not only the best movie of the year but one of the best of all time - that I feel slightly assailed for merely admiring it.
Toy Story 3 did not make me cry, like it did some critics. I didn’t even enjoy it in the same way I enjoyed the first half of Wall-E or certain passages in Up. I thought it was clever and colorful but hardly profound, and while the science behind the illusion is fascinating, to tell you the truth, after about five minutes I was pretty bored (although like every movie-wise being, I appreciated all the references to old prison and chain gang movies). Forgive me for failing to find another essay on the inner life of inanimate objects fascinating.
Maybe you say I just don’t get it - and I’ll admit I don’t understand how otherwise reasonable adults can go unabashedly fanboy over Tolkien or the Twilight books and movies. I understand enjoying these things as guilty pleasures, and we all ought to make room for a little junk in our life (True Blood), but not to the exclusion of more challenging diversions. I am anti-Toy Story to the extent that it contributes to the ongoing infantilization of the culture.
But my failure to thoroughly enjoy Toy Story 3 doesn’t argue against its quality - I understand it isn’t made for me and not every entertainment product needs be calibrated for my taste.
My wife, Karen, remembers the first time she saw Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.She was blown away by it; she thought it was an amazing film and it pretty much opened her up to the idea that movies might be more than pleasant tranquilizers good for burning off a couple of hours. And she was amazed when she encountered people who didn’t like the movie - people who violently hated that movie. She says it was the first time she really understood that reasonable minds could differ on the merits of a work of art.
While Toy Story 3 obviously affects some grown-ups deeply, I can read its themes - of abandonment, programmed obsolescence, the importance of community and the healing power of love - and yet not be much moved by it.
I appreciate it as an efficient, effective machine - even a thing of beauty. But you can’t make me love it. And it scares me just a little that so many of you love it so loudly.
All I’m saying is that we don’t all have to like the same things, and that it’s possible to recognize excellence without forming an emotional attachment. That Toy Story 3 isn’t my favorite movie of the year doesn’t mean you’re a sucker for liking it. And it doesn’t mean my heart is three sizes too small. It just means that we like different things.
While I was embarrassed to be watching Toy Story 3 without the cover of children, I’m not sure I should have worried about that. But maybe we ought to worry that so many of us grown-ups receive the blessings of Pixar uncritically, that we are so easily enthralled. Sometimes I wish there were more ushers like the one who confronted John Waters: Don’t you people know it’s a children’s movie?
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MovieStyle, Pages 31 on 07/02/2010