Having just seen the aforementioned, I’m not sure yet whether it was a good movie. But it was definitely not a good little kid movie.

My brats (3.5 and 5.5 years old) enjoyed just about every Pixar feature. They enjoyed Cars far more than it deserved, but then it wasn’t the merchandising king for nothing.

Minor fight scenes don’t freak them out, but the level of violent imagery and action in Toy Story 3 was well beyond any of the others. Combined with the gutcrunching audio level in a modern theater, I would expect that the recurrent fearful cowering / shrieking from my brats would not be unique to them. (They did insist on finishing the film.) Fellow parents with little ones — don’t assume that this feature is not substantially more intense than others. I wish I had waited for the DVD, to dilute the experience. Maybe the brats would have laughed more than once.

As for those with a weakness for melodrama, bring some hankies. Pixar lays it on pretty thick in this episode – from the opening credits “our friendship will never die … [blackout]” scene right through the overpregnant pauses at the denouement. I suspect many people around my age ponder the finiteness of time enough that tear-jerking based on life, death, aging, passing-the-torch, blah blah blah, is just too damn easy. I am starting to resent it.