Until the release date of Toy Story 3, it was at 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes according to the professional reviewers (T-Meter Critics). Enter a few contrarian jerks. On the release date of Toy Story 3, long after many of the reviews had already been posted, a couple of stray reviews were posted, stating that Toy Story 3 was rotten. This has ruined Toy Story’s perfect streak on the website, with both Toy Story and Toy Story 2 remaining at 100% fresh ratings, robbing it of the chance to be the only trilogy ever with a perfect 100% rating. Another negative review showed up on Sunday, making Toy Story 3′s rating a sadly imperfect 98%.

If the reviews were genuine, if they had real criticisms about the movie, I wouldn’t be so incensed by this. I admit, the Pixar fangirl inside of me would be annoyed, but if they were real reviews, that would certainly mitigate the fury that I feel right now at these three men, who can only really be characterized as assholes. Yeah, I said it.

One reviewer, Armond White, has a history of giving contrary reviews. If everyone loves it, inevitably, he hated it. He criticizes Toy Story 3 for having too much product placement, though he gives no explicit examples of how Toy Story 3 has any more product placement than either of the other Toy Story films. The blurb on Rotten Tomatoes reads: “Toy Story 3 is so besotted with brand names and product-placement that it stops being about the innocent pleasures of imagination — the usefulness of toys — and strictly celebrates consumerism.” In the full review, his main point seems to be that the movie is about toys, and that’s just not a good movie! Wow, how useful. He has gotten a lot of attention for his negative review, something I suspect was not on accident, and has managed to say absolutely nothing about why he has cursed the movie with the “rotten” rating. What is the point of a review if the reviewer cannot actually tell his readers why he did or didn’t like it? That’s left for us non-professional reviewers, who are allowed, by dint of not doing it professionally, to have an opinion of “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it.” We don’t have to ascertain whether the movie is good, merely whether we enjoyed it or not, and those are two vastly different things. He has cheated us all out of a real review by preferring to have a different opinion than everyone else on this and other popular films. (It’s not the first time he’s panned a fan and critic favorite.)

The second reviewer who posted his negative review on Friday is Cole Smithey. His blurb is this: “Once you get past paying the inflated price for an animated “3-D” movie where nothing floats in front of your eyes as with quality 3-D films, the story that unfolds is more sad than joyful.” I am amazed at how he has managed to say absolutely nothing critical about the movie itself other than the fact that it was sad. Really? A movie is sad? This makes it bad, apparently. His opinion of the 3D is equally ridiculous, since it seems like he wants the gimmicky 3D with things “flying” at his head. (That’s the first time I’ve seen anyone other than a kid want that experience.) Smithey’s website claims he’s the smartest film critic in the world. For a man that smart, one would think he’d be able to come up with more than a couple of short paragraphs about why he hated this otherwise universally loved film. “‘Toy Story 3′ is about neglect, betrayal, and the planned obsolescence of plastic toys that end up as so much toxic landfill.” And this is a bad message for the film, apparently, to have. Maybe if he spent his time focusing less on the fact that Andy had enough sentimental attachment to keep his childhood toys until he was 17 (I still have  my Holly bear, and I’m 25 in two days. What does that say about me, eh?) – Smithey implies that Andy can’t possibly be getting any dates as a result of his emotional attachment to toys that he’s had since he was a small kid) – he would have seen that the movie is less about the sad reality that eventually we all have to put away toys and do grown-up things for the majority of our lives. His review is forced at best, and he says nothing about what makes the film other than it includes themes like abandonment and the danger of planned obsolescence. Gee, definitely not things that people have to deal with in real life! And he totally ignores the ending, claiming that the film is sociopathic and promotes the wrong message to kids. Definitely don’t donate your toys to daycares or other smaller kids, folks! Definitely don’t do what you can to ensure that your old toys don’t end up in landfill, but instead go to other kids who will enjoy them as much as you did! Definitely don’t form emotional attachments to your toys that give you fond memories of your childhood, or you’ll never get any dates! Yep, I totally see it.

The third negative review that Toy Story 3 has been smacked with is by Jeremy Heilman. I’m not really sure what I can say about his review except that he totally pans Toy Story 3, calling the plot threadbare and accusing it of being a rehash of Toy Story 2. This man gave a more favorable review to a movie called The Human Centipede, in which people bite the butts of a person in front of them, forming a long line – in essence, a human centipede. What the hell? How can a movie like that garner more favor than Toy Story 3? He accuses:  “Toy Story 3 frequently indulges in the cheap brand of crass humor that has defined that series, with fart jokes, ethnic jokes, and gay jokes throughout its run time.” I’m not sure what movie he was watching, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Toy Story 3. This smacks of attention whoring to me – giving a negative review late, destined to be on the front page of Rotten Tomatoes, and scarring the reputation of an otherwise well-loved film.

These men do movie reviews at least semi-professionally. They are the ones that the rest of us look to (in theory) to help us decide whether a movie is worth our time and money. How are we supposed to trust any reviewer when there are those who are willing to give negative reviews simply for the sake of doing so, or for the attention that will inevitably follow for being in such a minority? There ought to be a level of integrity expected from those whose job it is to tell us whether something is good or bad. These reviewers should have some kind of check and balance to keep them from habitually panning fan and critic favorites for the sake of being contrary. You like a specific genre better than others, yet you review all genres? You are not a reviewer whose opinion should be broadcast to the general public, because what you are spreading is a false representation of the truth. Perhaps you don’t like this film (and that goes for any film), but if you have a history of disliking specific kinds of films, how is that a real review? It isn’t a criticism of the film itself, it is a criticism of the genre, disguised as a review for a specific film.

In the case of Toy Story 3, these reviewers have gamed the system and gotten away with it at the loss of something that Toy Story 3 and the Toy Story series deserve: a perfect record. The people at Pixar have poured their hearts and souls into this film, and it shows, just as it has with all of the ten films released previous to this. They strove to tell a good story, and they did. The only people in the world who disagree are these three assholes who can’t even manage to say anything real or valid about why they don’t agree that it was a cinematically well-told story.

Roger Ebert called Armond White a troll last summer for his inconsistent review history, and I’m going to go one further: Armond White, Cole Smithey and Jeremy Heilman: You are all trolls of the worst order. You don’t deserve to write reviews that other people are expected to take seriously. I hope Rotten Tomatoes yanks your T-Meter Critic status.

Disclaimer: I loved Toy Story 3. I am very incensed by what these men have written, but I think you should know that my bias in the other direction regarding this single film may affect your view of my thoughts here.

Fifteen years ago, the very first Toy Story film came out. I was ten years old, and I remember going to the theater to see it. I remember being amazed at how real everything looked, and loving the story. I thought Woody was the best toy ever, and Rex was one cool dude. I remember getting toys from Burger King, of all places, and playing with them a lot. (They were hand-puppets. Possibly the coolest kid’s meal toys that ever existed.)

In 1999, I was 14. Toy Story 2 came out and my mom again took us to see it. I remember being amazed that not only was it good (and sequels had a bad reputation by that time), but it was just as good if not better than the original! How could they manage such a feat? And then they released it with bloopers a couple of weeks later, and back to the theater I went, for the sole purpose of seeing it with the blooper reel at the end. It probably didn’t hurt that I loved the movie.

For the last eleven years, I’ve been enjoying both Toy Story and Toy Story 2, thinking that was all there was to the franchise, and thinking that was just fine. I was okay with Andy staying a kid in my imagination. And then I heard that there was going to be Toy Story 3. I was immediately skeptical. I mean, Pixar managed to capture lightning in a bottle twice with the Toy Story, erm, story. Could they really expect to do it a third time? Some of my fears were put to rest when we accidentally got to be part of a Q&A with Lee Unkrich, the director of Toy Story 3, at a screening of The Pixar Story at the Cleveland International Film Festival in March, 2008. He was so excited about Toy Story 3, about 3D, about all the things that both Disney and Pixar would be doing in the future, that it was impossible to decry the company as an imminent failure and the movie as dreck. (Not that I would ever, ever say such a thing! Perish the thought! Ahem.)

Since I now follow Lee Unkrich on Twitter, it was only natural to get excited as I heard him enthusing about the various stages of production over the last year or so. He posted countdowns, letting us know that Toy Story 3 was only months away, and then weeks, then days from release. How could I not get excited? Excitement, however, only leads to more worry, as it can often lead to the horrible feeling of anticipointment. (See: Ponyo.) I knew that we would have to see the movie on opening day, though. I couldn’t risk having the movie spoiled for me, and I definitely wanted to enjoy this movie without any expectations as to what the plot had in store (other than as seen in the trailer, of course).

On release day, we showed up at Crocker Park for our 9PM showing maybe a little early. We’re talking two hours early. Whoops. Radio Disney had a booth set up outside the theater where they were giving away prizes and encouraging all the kids to come and dance. I’m sure it was a major boon for the theaters those kids were in that they’d been dancing in the hot sun for a while and were likely to be slightly more subdued by the time they got in to the movie. Or maybe it just riled them up even more. Who knows? We hung out in the Borders next door for a while, and then about an hour ahead, walked over to the movie theater. We got a drink, and sat for a few, expecting to be let in probably forty to forty-five minutes early. We tried to go in, and the boy said that it would be about twenty minutes before he could let us in. Oh! Eventually a line formed for the Toy Story 3 showing in 3D, theater 6. We got let in at around 8:45, and some people ran to the theater as if all the seats would run out before they got there. We got seats in the back and settled in for the start of the movie.

First, I’d like to commend those who worked on the short. I loved it. Day & Night was charming and interesting, and while it’s obvious that it was Pixars traditional computer animation, it also had a feeling of some of the drawn cartoons that I watched as a kid. The combination was really neat. I loved the use of sound effects, too – it was clever and well-done.

We saw Toy Story 3 both in 2D and 3D. We saw the 3D first, so that factors more into my thoughts about the film at the moment. The opening Pixar logo in 3D was really fun. It had such depth, and the way that it was rendered wasn’t gimmicky at all. Really – one of the things that stood out to me was the opening logo. Weird? Maybe. But it was cool! Then, after waiting for three years (since hearing of the film at The Pixar Story), it was finally time to see Toy Story 3.

The movie starts with an action-adventure feeling, featuring all of Andy’s toys. It’s difficult to know why this is going on at first, but it was exciting to watch the toys in action sequences more fitting for the kinds of characters that they are. Wild west, anyone? We find out later that it’s Andy’s imagination as he’s playing with his toys, and then he gets interrupted by mom with her video camera. It’s a sweet opening sequence, reminding us of the Andy that the toys (and we, by proxy) loved in Toy Story and Toy Story 2. Then we come to real time. Andy is grown up. He has graduated from high school and is off to college in a matter of days. The toys make a last-ditch effort to draw his attention to the toy box in which they have languished for years, waiting for him to realize how important they are to him. And it doesn’t work.

Andy’s mom shows up and gives him an ultimatum: he needs to sort through his stuff before he leaves to college. College, attic and trash are the categories he has to choose from, and with a heavy sigh, he decides to make some hard decisions about his toys. They’re going into the attic, with the exception of Woody, who’s going to college with him. But then – disaster strikes! Of course it does, it’s a movie! Andy is silly enough to put the toys into a trash bag to put them into the attic, but he is distracted by Molly, who is taking a box of her own old toys downstairs to be donated to Sunnyside daycare. He helps her take the box downstairs and leaves his bag on the floor, right under the stairs to the attic. Mom finds them and assumes the bag is trash. Because … it’s a trash bag. And it’s on the floor. What else is she going to assume?

The toys are being thrown out! They start freaking out! They manage to use Rex’s tail and escape from the trash bag, just in time not to be picked up by the garbage man (cameo: Sid Phillips! I love how self-referential Pixar films are). They do their usual “hide under something and run” trick to get into the garage, where they get into Andy’s mom’s car and deposit themselves into the donation box. Woody tries to talk them out of it, assuring them that they were meant for the attic, not the dump, but nobody believes him (as usual!), and they all end up en route to Sunnyside.

Now we have the plot and the conflict, and I’ll leave you at that. I don’t want to summarize the whole movie because it feels much more clinical than actually watching it. No amount of summary could do justice to this movie.

Toy Story 3 is really a celebration of everything that Pixar is capable of, and of how far it has come in the fifteen years that they’ve been producing feature films. It’s amazing to me to watch and see that the screws on Buzz look so real that they could have been film instead of animation. The attention to detail is, as always, incredible. It’s a beautiful movie as far as the rendering is concerned. But the beauty doesn’t end there – it also has a beautiful story. Andy grows up and goes to college, but the toys are given new hope for the future; hope that they’ll be played with and enjoyed for years to come by a kid just as wonderful as Andy himself. (I know, I spoiled that bit. I gave a warning waaaaaay up at the top that I would!) It was so sweet to watch her, and also to think about the precious toys that I have had packed away since I grew too old to play with them and also too old to have them on display. (It’s maybe weird for a married alm0st-twenty-five-year-old to have her stuffed animals out for viewing.) I pulled Holly bear out of her box when I got home after seeing the movie on Friday night. I slept with her for the first time since probably high school, maybe longer. She smells the same as I remember – like whatever fabric softener my mom used to use when she’d wash the bear for the umpteenth time. I thought about Andy giving up his toys, and it made me emotional all over again. Could I do that with Holly? Not a chance.

Two days later, I can’t even adequately describe how the movie made me feel. I laughed, I cried (3D glasses are good for hiding the tears, but they do nothing for muffling the sniffles that accompany), I got nervous and excited. It was 103 minutes of movie bliss. We saw the movie again yesterday with Johnathan’s mom, and I’m going to suggest we go to see it at the drive-in next weekend (we did the same with both Wall-E and Up), so that we can talk during the film and nobody will get mad at us for it.

My favorite moment while watching the movie for the first time came not from the movie itself, but from the two or three year old girl who was sitting next to us. She really didn’t have a whisper voice, or even an inside voice, which was pretty annoying most of the time. She redeemed herself only by saying possibly the most funny thing I’ve ever heard a child say at just the right moment. In reference to a scene with Mr. Potato Head: “He looks more like Mr. PoTaco head!” I had to stifle my giggles because the moment onscreen was definitely not as funny as what I had heard. Yes, little girl, he did look like Mr. PoTaco head!

I loved Toy Story 3. So much. There’s really nothing else I can say in praise of this wonderful movie. Can you believe that Pixar has done it eleven times now? Eleven successes! Way to go, Pixar!