5. “Toy Story 3” (2010)
Pixar is utterly fearless. Still. Consider “Toy Story 3”: it was the second sequel to the beloved original and (at the time) considered by many to be the conclusion of the “Toy Story” saga as a whole. They could have lathered on the fan service, kicked back with a predictable plot that saw all the old characters falling back into their familiar roles, and watched the hundreds-of-millions come pouring in. But instead, director Lee Unkrich and screenwriter Michael Arndt, decided to flip the formula on its head. Instead of having Andy suspended in perpetual childhood, they had him age in the years in between the films, so that now he was going away to college and putting his playthings behind him. This caused the toys to show a different side of themselves – petty, jealous, self-pitying (basically all the things Woody was in the first movie) as they dealt with the inevitable. Instead of having them remain at the house to ponder their fate, the creative team had them imprisoned at a ghoulish daycare center ruled by a ruthless teddy bear named Lotso (Ned Beatty). The previous films had been defined by a kind of unerring cheeriness, no matter the danger, while “Toy Story 3” developed an almost film noir-y sense of lighting and color and took on the tone and structure of a prison escape film, laced with elements of old horror movies. Thematically, it was concerned only with death, as the characters faced an eternity decomposing in some landfill (or incinerated, as a powerful last act sequence dramatizes, complete with Holocaust imagery) or, as Lotso proposes, being stuck in the day care where new kids can play with you every year, which can either be read as an allegory for purgatory or an elaborate investigation of reincarnation. Pretty heady shit for a movie where one of the main characters is a Slinky dog. The final moments of the film, which saw Andy pass off his beloved toys (and our beloved characters) to a new family, is some of the most deeply touching and profoundly moving. Walking out of the first screening, everyone sheepishly kept on their 3D glasses, all the better to hide the tears.
4. “WALL-E” (2008)
Beloved by critics (A.O. Scott called it his favorite film of the decade) and derided by right wing pundits (who claimed that its touchy-feely environmentalist message was harmful to kids), “WALL-E” is a boldly experimental movie that doesn’t quite stick the landing but none the less feels like an out-there art house joint more than a hugely budgeted Hollywood kids’ movie. Consider the movie’s almost completely wordless first half, where a junky little droid named WALL-E (those of you playing at home might remember that WALL-E stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth-Class) still cleans a completely deserted, garbage-covered planet earth hundreds of years after the last human lived there and at least that long since the last robot stopped working. The reason WALL-E has survived is that he has developed a personality: he forages through the wreckage for knickknacks that he brings back to his home and he has a pet cockroach that he cares for. When a spaceship lands in the wasteland and a sleek new robot named EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), WALL-E becomes smitten. When she discovers that he has a living plant amongst his souvenirs, she’s recalled back to a floating cruise ship called the Axiom, which is bursting with robotic life but where humans have devolved into gelatinous blobs. While on the Axiom, WALL-E uncovers a conspiracy and “reboots” humanity. He also falls in love. There are moments of pure transcendence in “WALL-E,” like the space dance that he and EVE go on outside of the Axiom, and the movie is probably the hardest, in terms of satire, of all the Pixar movies (co-writer Jim Reardon was a “Simpsons” bigwig for many years and in a lot of ways the movie feels like a really expensive episode of “Futurama“). It’s also incredibly strange: from the wordless first half to the fact that this is a movie in which real life actors appear alongside their CGI counterparts (mostly by Fred Willard as the head of the Buy-N-Large corporation) to all the “Hello Dolly” references and the general bleakness in terms of tone, this is a ballsy, gonzo movie. The story, however, could have still used some tightening (if this super old robotic conspiracy to keep people from earth was in effect why send EVE down there at all?), the fact that they were so hell bent on assigning binary gender characteristics to sexless robots seems foolhardy and it goes without saying that the wordless first half makes the chaotic second half less powerful.
3. “Up” (2009)
In many ways “Up” is just as weird (if not weirder) than “WALL-E,” but with a more controlled story and covered in a layer of sweet surrealism. In “Up” an old man named Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner) is still reeling from the death of the love of his life, Ellie. They had both been drawn together by a longing for adventure, but life often got in the way of their plans – specifically to visit a waterfall in the South American jungle. After Carl assaults a construction worker, he’s forced to evacuate the home he made with Ellie and move into an old folks home. Instead, he ties a gazillion balloons to his home and charts a course for South America. He’ll still get to that waterfall if it’s the last thing he does. Of course, to complicate matters, there’s a stowaway on this adventure – a Wilderness Explorer named Russell (Jordan Nagai) who was trying to score his “assisting the elderly” badge and got much, much more than he bargained for. While in the jungle, Carl and Russell meet up with a talking dog named Dug (co-director Bob Peterson) and an exotic bird named Kevin. Carl also meets his long lost idol, a disgraced adventurer named Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer). The entire plot is gleefully bizarre but somehow all of the different strands make sense both independently and when they’re threaded together. “Up” will probably be best remembered for the wordless, four-minute “married life” prologue that gracefully tells the story of Carl and Ellie’s life together, down to its bittersweet ending. It’s not only the movie’s greatest triumph but it’s one of the defining moments in animation from the last couple of decades (it is also scored, beautifully, by Michael Giacchino). Early prognosticators said that the film’s chances for commercial success were dim (toy makers wouldn’t even license the property), but it ended up being a smash both critically and financially, and became only the second animated movie in the history of the Academy Awards to be nominated for Best Picture (the first was “Beauty & the Beast“). Instead of a liability, its strangeness ended up being an asset. Like Kevin, there’s an elusive wonder to “Up” that is hard to pinpoint or put into words. Adventure is out there. It’s in here too.
