A remarkable movie

In keeping with our anniversary tradition, we celebrated by having a steak and watching a Pixar movie. :-) We watched Wall-E the day after we were married, Up last summer, and so this afternoon we went to see Toy Story 3. It's pretty good. Not my favorite Pixar ever of all time, but it probably is my favorite among the Toy Stories, and we might well get it when it comes out.

It had some funny moments (flamenco!!). It had its nods to The Great Escape and Star Wars (prison guards! trash compactors!). We met a handful of great new characters, like Bonnie and the classically-trained Shakespearean actor hedgehog, and Chatter, a phone I knew years ago in the old Trinity church nursery. For the climax they found a Tolkienian eucatastrophe, a sudden joyous turn, without being random - they tied in a plot element from the first movie to save the day. I also liked the way the bad guy got his richly-earned comeuppance without the good guys having to take revenge. Good stories work themselves out that way.

And I really loved how the friends handled certain death. They had nothing else they could do to save themselves, so they held hands and looked death in the face. I haven't seen heroism like that in a film in a long time. And when you hope you can die as well as a Slinky-dog -- well, that's a remarkable movie.