Keven Takes on: TOY STORY 3

Pixar has not only outdone themselves, like they tend to do almost every time they release a new film, but they've smashed every expectation to pieces and created their best animated film of all time. Watch for it on Blu-Ray and DVD November 2nd.

Toy Story 3 is not only the best animated film of the year, it's the best Pixar film ever and one of the best films overall of the year and it's also downright terrifying. There are scenes in this movie that I can only describe as traumatic, tear-jerking and ultra depressing. Pixar manages to make it work though because even though the movie is horrifically sad on more than one occasion, it's also hilarious in between those doom-filled sequences.

The film, which has got to be the final Toy Story movie, is about Woody, Buzz and the gang being donated to a local daycare after Andy grows up and begins to move to college. After the toys get to this beautifully rendered daycare, which I could play back and look at for hours, immersing myself in all the great detail, they find out that this place is maybe not what it appears to be on the surface. I don't want to give too much away, but there is a definite villain in this film and that villain's origin story is heart-breaking.

I wasn't so much as sad at the end of the movie like most people were, but I found this badguy's reason for being upset with the world to be astoundingly gut-wrenching. There are a ton of dark elements to Toy Story 3 that make for not only brilliant visuals which show more than just leaps and bounds from the first two flicks in the franchise, but they craft a beautiful world that rivals the complexities of Pixar's other visual feast - Wall-E.

The voice-acting is perfect as it always has been with Tim Allen and Tom Hanks, but the supporting performances are what make the film so memorable. Ned Beatty voices our villain and makes him feel both redeemable and scary all at the same time with the flip of a switch. The action in Toy Story 3 is also something to behold, because I don't think I can remember a more jarring scene this year than being trampled by a sea of barrel o' monkeys or when playschool kids are bashing a dinosaur's head into a drum. Everything felt so real, which is what most animated films lack. Point out the obvious - I know, deal with it. I don't know how Pixar does it, but they make their movies feel so damn real that it's almost annoying when I watch a film with live actors right after and don't see half the emotion that I did watching Mr. Potato Head make a poop joke.

In the end, what I'll remember most from Toy Story 3 is that not only is this film sort of a cap on what feels like my entire childhood - one last hooray before I realize I'm indeed an adult, but that these beautiful and battered characters have more soul in their plastic computer generated bodies than most real-life actors. Now that's an achievement.