5 Reasons Critics Are Falling Over Themselves to Praise 'Toy Story 3'

Pixar just can't fail

Rarely does a film earn this kind of unanimous acclaim. Earning a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating, Toy Story 3 debuts in theaters this weekend and it has already swept up critics. The Pixar franchise brings back all the favorite characters, including Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz (Tim Allen), Mr. Potato Head (Don Rickles) and Jessie (Joan Cusack). The film's best attributes after the clip:

• It's Incredibly Fun, writes Rene Rodriguez at The Miami Herald: "The movie has a noticeably irreverent energy, as if the filmmakers had decided to indulge themselves after cranking out so many masterpieces.. The story hook of Toy Story 3, co-written by Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine), is that Woody, Buzz and the rest wind up being donated to a day-care center, where manic toddlers smash them against walls and find out how far they'll stretch and bend. The concept is ingenious -- a playground as torture chamber -- and the movie essentially becomes a prison-break picture complete with an evil warden, a pink teddy bear (Ned Beatty) who isn't as kind as he seems"

• It's Pixar We're Talking About, writes A.O. Scott at The New York Times: "Perhaps no series of movies has so brilliantly grasped the emotional logic that binds the innate creativity of children at play to the machinery of mass entertainment. Each one feeds, and colonizes, the other. And perhaps only Pixar, a company Utopian in its faith in technological progress, artisanal in its devotion to quality and nearly unbeatable in its marketing savvy, could have engineered a sweeping capitalist narrative of such grandeur and charm as the 'Toy Story' features."

• Its Emotional Depth, writes Joe Neumaier at the New York Daily News: "They don't just make movies for children; this one has references to Jean-Paul Sartre and Cool Hand Luke and a sophisticated structure with more twists than a Rubik's Cube."

• Grown Men Will Cry, writes Gary Thompson at the Philadelphia Daily News: "Toy Story 3' continues Pixar's unique tradition of sending grown men out of the theater pretending they're not crying. Pixar is the only big-time animator that routinely tells stories about melancholy and loss, and 'TS3' (3-D) has those elements - likely to inspire misty yearnings for lost youth, lost toys or a lost culture that encouraged children to play with toys rather than electronics."

• It Has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes Rating!  The notoriously hard-to-please review aggregator summarizes the nation's critics: "Deftly blending comedy, adventure, and honest emotion, Toy Story 3 is a rare second sequel that really works."