When Randy Newman sang of the years going by for the original Toy Story movie (“our friendship will never die”), he couldn’t have known that Pixar would be interrogating the particulars of his lyrics 15 years later. Toy Story 3 just may be the most highly anticipated play-date of all time. Obviously by now we have the utmost faith in Pixar, but the level of expectation placed on this film is even higher than usual. The film follows on from the absolute cinematic revelations that were Wall-E and Up, and, in another sense, follows on from the exceptional Toy Story and Toy Story 2 films. In more sentimental terms, Toy Story was where it all began for Pixar, and these are some truly beloved characters. One thing’s for sure: Toy Story 3 was never going to be a half-hearted yank of the pullstring.

Andy has outgrown his toys. His little sister Molly thinks it’s embarrassing that he still has them at all, but they’re there, some of them anyway, in a chest in his bedroom. What few of them remain – Weezy is gone, Bo too – are resorting to devious tactics to get the attention they’ve become so starved of, and Andy’s once cherished sheriff doll Woody (Tom Hanks) clings to every word from his favourite deputy. Andy is getting ready to leave for college and the toys, who knew this day would come (“It’ll be fun while it lasts!” Woody says cheerfully at the end of Toy Story 2), are plunged into nothing less than an existential crisis.

Being dropped by the side of the road in a garbage bag is the last straw. While Woody insists on loyalty to Andy, the others – Buzz (Tim Allen), Jessie (Joan Cusack), Hamm, Rex, Slinky, Bullseye and Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head– dive into a donations box along with Molly’s inconsolable Barbie doll (Jodi Benson, Little Mermaid’s Ariel from way back).

They wind up at the Sunnyside Day Care Centre, which, to everyone but Woody, seems like a toy paradise, full of happy children and saturated with the familiar cool turquoises of a Venezuelan rainforest. There they meet a Ken doll (Michael Keaton), a walking clothes hanger whose cheap plastic limbs gravitate towards Barbie; and Sunnydale’s authority figure, the velvet-nosed and strawberry-scented Lots-o’-Huggin’ bear – Lotso for short (Ned Beatty) – who escorts the new charges to the Caterpillars room to await the children. Woody, having none of it, leaves to return to Andy, while life at Sunnydale turns out not to be as sunny as the toys imagined.

You can be sure that the original creators of Toy Story have kept a close eye on their baby. It’s directed by Lee Unkrich (co-director of Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo) who also writes, with John Lassetter (director of Toy Story and Toy Story 2) and Andrew Stanton (screenwriter for same). The principal screenwriting credit however goes to new talent Michael Arndt, who started working on Toy Story 3 two years before Little Miss Sunshine (for which he wrote the screenplay) rolled onto screens.

Like Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3 too is the story of a dysfunctional family of sorts, and the film honours our memories of the characters – Rex’s permanent state of excitability, Buzz and Jessie’s awkward sexual tension, the squeeze toy alien triplets still pestering Mr. Potato Head – but also gives them far more interesting things to do. Mr. Potato Head making do sans Potato is one of the funniest extended sequences in a Pixar film, and the Buzz Lightyear default state of space ranger delusion – a recurring highlight in the series – turns out to be even more enjoyable in Spanish.

They are of course sharing their 104 minutes of screen-time with a colourful array of new characters, no doubt a godsend for the people who complained about the lack of merchandise opportunities of Up. Most of them are hilarious, and plenty are from the shady end of the toybox: Big Baby, a baby doll with a sinister-looking droopy eye; a Fisher Price Chatter Telephone as a tipster with a New Yorker accent; and an extremely psychotic cymbal-clanging monkey. There are toys to suit the voices of Whoopi Goldberg, Bonnie Hunt, Flight of the Conchords gal Kristen Schaal, familiar Pixar voices Jeff Garlin and Richard Kind, and Timothy Dalton (as a Stanislavski-trained hedgehog who takes the performance aspect of being a toy a tad too seriously). In a nice touch, a Totoro doll – often glimpsed atop John Lassetter’s desk – also appears in a non-speaking role, and the sepia-tinged reminiscences of Chuckles the Clown is a riot.

When it comes to the music of the films, Michael Giacchino probably penned Pixar’s finest tune (‘Married Life’ from Up) and no one conjures the ethereal like Thomas Newman (Finding Nemo, Wall-E), but Randy Newman has always been perfect for the whimsical heroics of the Toy Story movies. His score for Toy Story 3 is excellent – witness especially the way he renders the cacophony of the day care centre – by turns touching, terrifying and hilarious.

Toy Story 3 also gets the amped-up grand-scale climactic sequence that was such a strong feature of the first two films (and arguably less important in Wall-E and Up). From here on in, Toy Story 3 becomes so emotional, so intense – Newman’s score sounds like fate knocking, pounding at the door – that it would be a terrible sin for a critic to rob the movie of its power by hinting at what’s in store for the toys. Suffice it to say, it’s proof of how much we love these characters that Toy Story 3 breaks your heart like you’ve never had it broken before.

Toy Story 3 is full of poignant observations on growing up, family and mortality, but perhaps the profoundest achievement of the Toy Story series and this installment in particular is the way it has captured the special relationship between a child and his toys. It joins the ranks – one should note there aren’t too many in said ranks – of worthy threequels (Big Baby even has a Return of the Jedi moment). The Toy Story trilogy – it has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? – is destined to become one of the great movie trilogies of all time, and Pixar pulled it off, as ever, making it look like child’s play.

Toy Story 3 opens in cinemas on Thursday, June 24.
You can view the Toy Story 3 movie trailer here on TheVine.