Twenty-Two Going On Eight...

Toy Story, although an animated film, is a cinematic masterpiece in its own right.  I may have a slight bias towards this film since I was 8 years old when I first saw it, and watching it as an adult produces a tsunami of nostalgia, but watching this movie at 22 years old offers interesting emotions mainly because I am only three years out of my teens.  Three years is a MINISCULE amount of time, and although I strive in my everyday life to pretend like I am a fully functional adult, I am not always successful.  Not enough time has passed since my childhood to allow me to forget the emotions that accompanied inventing fantastical story-worlds starring my favorite toys or the confusion that bore down upon my pre-pubescence, or the dreaded high school years where I was pretty much predestined to hate everyone and everything unconditionally.  Ah, what lovely times....

Early childhood was magical, a time before sentient awareness of an at times harsh reality set in, a time when we were carefree and able to invent and create the unimaginable and impossible.  I had many toys growing up, but one I remember best was a big white teddy bear my mother had given me: Beary, or at times, Elizabeth (for more proper occasions, i.e. tea, weddings, etc.)  Just a simple bear lived out all my greatest childhood fantasies and protected me from the monsters in the closet at night, because at that age the monsters in my room were as real as the monsters that lived outside in the real world, or maybe it was just my excuse to not clean my closet, who knows??  To this day I am saddened by the thought of all my abandoned stuffed animals sitting in my old room, 3000 miles away, along with my childhood.

Toy Story is an adventure for children because of the fun, animated characters and their witty repartee, and is an adventure for adults with the ability to remember what it was like to have an imagination, or as some may put it, the ability to "suspend disbelief", something I hold near and dear to my heart as a child-slash-adult.  To this day the movie still holds my attention, makes me laugh out loud, and allows me to cry without shame, because being able remember what it was like to be a child is not a bad thing at all.

"You've got a friend in me."


My Rating:
V - 9
A - 8
S - 9
A - 8
E - 10

Total = 44/50