Toy Story 3

I saw TS3 on Thursday night, Midnight Showing. Only my second of the summer, following last month's Iron Man 2, normally I'm a whore for this sort of thing, but I seem to be getting older. By older I mean 24. Fuck. If this is what 24 is like, I plan on dying before 50, or at least discovering cryo-stasis and outliving the great-great-great-great grandchildren of everyone I know.
Meanwhile, Toy Story.
I had just turned 10 when the first one came out in 1995, and in fact part of my birthday present was to go to Burger King to get one of the huge puppets they had of the characters (they were out of Buzz and Woody, I got Hamm instead) and then off to see the film. Needless to say, I was blown away by the original story and stellar animation, like everyone else was, and I couldn't help but be reminded of that experience when I sat down to see the third one nearly 15 years later.
It wasn't too difficult to remember that it had been that long and the differences were vast. I drove myself, for starters, and before the movie even started my girlfriend fell asleep against my chest. Not exactly something you'd care about as a 10 year old.
Before that, though, I found myself surrounded by teenagers. Or more precisely, tweenagers. As annoying as Glenn Beck, but there's more of them. Like if Agent Smith was interested in pop music and iPhone apps.
And they seem to relish shouting. Not even shouting in general, they have to come up with the dumbest random gossip and improvise songs on the spot before being allowed to belt it out. The acoustics in the main hall of our theater are very good. I was getting ready to start with the throat punching.
Thankfully, the movie started before all of that happened, and I was 10 again. Woody, Buzz, even Rex's incessant whining was all still there, and fully developed characters came alive whenever people weren't looking. We fell in love with new characters, heartbroken by the loss of old, slightly disturbed by Ken's fondness for clothing, and TOTALLY SAW THE TOTORO CAMEO (he has an incredibly creepy smile).
In the end, as the fire loomed closer, and our always optimistic, heroic, faithful, beautiful plastic friends held hands and accepted their fate, we cried, because we knew, like them, everything must end.
Everything must end. But that doesn't mean it should.