College. Suburbia. Daycare. Coming of age. Andy (John Morris) is all grown up and preparing for college near the beginning of Toy Story 3, and his favourite toys are worried about their resulting fate. Happy to live out their days in the attic, they suffer a crisis of conscience after having been accidentally thrown in the trash. Narrowly escaping their curbside predicament, they then stow themselves away within a box of donations travelling to Sunnyside Daycare. Accepting that Andy has outgrown them and happy to be living within an environment populated by energetic toy-loving kids again, Buzz (Tim Allen) etc. embrace their new surroundings and approach the transition enthusiastically. But Woody (Tom Hanks) knows that they were supposed to be sent to the attic and refuses to play any other role than that of one of Andy's toys. He therefore sets out to return home while his friends discover that Sunnyside is actually a maximum security prison run by a despotic toy named Lots-O'-Huggin' Bear (Ned Beatty). Will Woody be able to convince his friends that they should return home to their rightful owner, and if so, will he be able to help them escape?
Sigh. So the toys leave the private comforts of suburbia to live within the public domain only to discover that it's being run by a tyrant. They try and grow up, move on, adapt, change, only to be ruthlessly beat down and outrageously abused. The tyrant is defeated and replaced by Ken and Barbie (who live in Sunnyside's most suburban residence) who turn Sunnyside into a warm and friendly place. Which I guess just points out that as you move around working you'll probably find autocratic and hospitable environments, many of which are hospitably autocratic or autocratically hospitable, depending on their socio-political dynamics and how well your personality fits within, and while living within the autocratic, you may spend time wishing you were still at home. But the film's predominant focus vilifies the world outside that within which servants cater to the well-to-do, suggesting that it's better to grow up and live in suburbia than try and develop a more gregarious public sphere. Meaning thumbs down to Toy Story 3.
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