I’ll admit that I had reservations when I first soaked in the first full-length trailer for Toy Story 3. Besides a brief mention of Andy growing up and going to college, the trailer never hinted at the wider story or emotional core that I look for in Pixar films.  Instead, the trailer was filled with pop culture jokes, some funny and… well, some startlingly Dreamworks-esque in approach.  My initial disappointment with the trailer made me cap my anticipation early on, and I found myself terrified that another beloved franchise would fall victim to the curse of the mediocre-third-installment.

Now I understand.  Pixar’s advertising campaigns are infamously secretive and rarely reveal anything outside of the first act.  If the ads had shown anything more, some of the dark turns would have been revealed and I wouldn’t have been as surprised to go on the roller coaster ride I did.

Toy Story movies, as well as Pixar films in general, are exciting for a great reason: an increasing sense of conflict with every scene.  As soon as our characters emerge from a situation unscathed, the rug is pulled out and the stakes double.  Then the stakes double again.  Then they double again.  Near the end of Toy Story 3, the stakes reach heights that the previous two chapters never got close to.  And what is this – a climatic scene in an animated film that’s actually frightening and contains real despair?  These moments feel dangerous and aren’t milked for cheap comic relief.  I found myself briefly asking a question I’ve rarely asked a family film: is this going to have a happy ending?

All that uncertainty and excitement can be attributed to the Pixar model for storytelling.  I would consider Toy Story 3’s screenplay a lock for an Oscar nomination.  The writing is so well balanced between genres, between action set pieces and unashamed emotion, between crowd-pleasing comedy and character development.  The balancing act should seem miraculous, but the finished product comes off effortlessly and it’s easy to forget that this movie could have failed at any one point in lesser hands.

Toy Story 3 is also very funny.  There is probably more overt humor in this installment than the others, but thankfully the range of humor included is wide appealing and mostly avoids cheap gags for the smaller kids.  The packed audience of college kids I saw it with laughed uproariously throughout, especially at the introduction of a toy named Chuckles the Clown.

The emotional core that I mentioned earlier is certainly present and anyone who has grown up with these characters will be deeply affected by this movie.  If you’re watching the movie with a packed house, it’s a guarantee that as the story draws to a close, grown adults will struggle to stifle those tears and hide them under those graciously large 3-D glasses.

Toy Story 3 is a genre-bending, crowd-pleasing, thrilling, and satisfying ride.  It joins the ranks of instant classics that Pixar seems to churn out every year.  Also, it might be the very best second sequel to a series ever.

Ten years ago, the world had no idea who Steve Carell was. Today, he is one of the biggest comedy actors in America.  Aside from continuing work in a hit TV show, he stars in three major movies this year, including Date Night, Dinner for Schmucks, and the animated Despicable Me. So how did Steve Carell transition from an apparent nobody into a major summer box office draw?

His career can be split up into three very distinct phases:

Phase 1: The TV Beginnings

Notable Work: Curly Sue (1991), “The Dana Carvey Show” (1996), “The Ambiguously Gay Duo” (1996-2007) “Over the Top” (1997), “The Daily Show” (1999-2005), “Watching Ellie” (2002-2003)

Steve Carell’s first major acting gig was nearly 20 years ago in Curly Sue, the last film directed by John Hughes, in which Carell has a minor role with about one minute of screen time.

The Dana Carvey Show, while only around for one season on ABC, involved some key players who would become gigantic talents in the next decade, most notably Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, and writer Charlie Kaufman.  Carell is heavily featured in most episodes, and it is easy to see the foundation for some of his later characters.  While the show itself was a failure, the surviving remnant was a recurring animated sketch that was continued on Saturday Night Live: The Ambiguously Gay Duo, featuring the voices of then-unknowns Carell and Colbert.

After being featured as a side character in the disastrous Tim Curry-starred sitcom, Over the Top, Steve Carell hit his biggest break of the 90s when he became a correspondent on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show.  He joined Colbert as a cast member and they both starred in a popular segment called Even ‘Stephven’.

The Seinfeld Curse famously struck down Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Watching Ellie after one season.  Carell had a substantial role in the show, but thankfully this would be his last failed project.  His career would only go uphill from here.

Phase 2: Supporting Character

Bruce Almighty (2003)

Carell’s first major appearance in a motion picture was as news anchor Evan Baxter in this summer blockbuster. His role is small and inconsequential to the plot, but it produced one of the better comedic scenes in the film, when Jim Carrey’s Bruce acts out his revenge on Evan during a live broadcast.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

This might be the film when casual movie fans took note of the name Steve Carell.  Here he plays the tremendously named Brick Tamland, a man-child of limited intelligence and the best random quips in a movie filled with random quips: “Brick, where’d you get a hand grenade?” – “I don’t know.”

Melinda and Melinda (2004) and Bewitched (2005)

Melinda and Melinda is a lukewarm and somewhat forgettable Woody Allen effort, unique for starring Will Ferrell in the male lead and pairing him up with Steve Carell for a minor scene in the story.  In Bewitched, Carell plays the wacky Uncle Arthur, also starring alongside Will Ferrell for the third time.  Both of these films are largely forgotten today and that might be for the best.

Phase 3: Leading Man

The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)

The year 2005 was the best thing that could have happened to Steve Carell.  But arguably his luckiest gig was playing the lead role in Judd Apatow’s hilariously crude and warm-hearted ode to virginal innocence.  Here, Carell shaped the prototype of inexperienced but well-meaning male protagonist that would dominate R-rated comedies for years to come.  The 40-Year-Old Virgin was not only a surprise box office success, but proved to be a critical darling as well.

The Office (2005 – present)

Coinciding with his appearance in a box office smash, Carell starred in the American remake of Ricky Gervais’s and Stephen Merchant’s The Office.  His recent screen success could be credited for the show’s steady increase in loyal fans during its first and second season.  Today, The Office might have changed its voice to be more broad-humored, but it appears the adjustment paid off by its introduction into mainstream pop culture.

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

Steve Carell would temporarily shed some of his former wackiness to play a supporting role in the indie-serio-comic movie of 2006.  His ‘Uncle Frank’ was a mix of unlikely quirks, but Carell somehow pulled off the performance and made the gay, heart-broken, Proust scholar one of the more memorable characters in this prototypical indie film of the later ‘00s. It is also the only Steve Carell film in the IMDB top 250.

Evan Almighty (2007)

There was no better way to measure Steve Carell’s sudden success than to take a look at the project, Evan Almighty.  The idea?  Create a spin-off story based around a very minor supporting character in Bruce Almighty and make it the most expensive comedy ever produced.  The only problem was that it was maligned by critics and was hindered by below-average writing and poor CGI.  The biggest blow, however, came from low box office returns – the worldwide gross of $173 million narrowly missed the $175 million total budget.  Regardless, studios still saw potential for Carell as a box office champ.

Dan in Real Life (2007)

In the same year, Steve Carell starred in a much smaller film; the inoffensive and breezy Dan in Real Life. While I’ve personally never seen any family get-togethers as sunny and activity-oriented as those depicted in the film, critics and audiences favored this simpler flick to the bloat and excess of Evan Almighty. Dan in Real Life became a small success.

Get Smart (2008)

The Steve Carell summer-blockbuster treatment was more successful in Get Smart than in Evan Almighty.  While the questionable CGI still lingered occasionally, Get Smart had enough charm and humor to make the genre send-up a fun summer movie.  It also made huge bucks, solidifying Carell as a box office draw.

Over the Hedge (2006) and Horton Hears a Who! (2008)

Like his Apatow contemporaries, Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill, Steve Carell has found himself providing many a featured voice for gigantic animated films. Over the Hedge and Horton Hears a Who! are both standard animated fare, but Horton might be better by a small margin.  We’ll see how this year’s Despicable Me stacks up.

So, to sum up Steve Carell’s biggest achievements thus far:

Best Comic Side Character: Brick Tamland in Anchorman (2004)

Career-Defining Turn: The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)

Biggest Box Office: Bruce Almighty (2003) – $242 million domestic

Most Critically Praised Movie: Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

Comparisons to The Wrestler are inevitable, but Crazy Heart is a much different film – trading emotional gut-punches for downplayed subtlety. The centerpiece is the Oscar-winning performance by the great Jeff Bridges as a booze-soaked country star turned loser.  Highlights include the surprisingly moving relationship between Bridges’ Bad Blake character and his young successor, played by Colin Farrell.  Unfortunately, the movie only taps into these scenes sporadically and the movie is dominated by the less-inspired love interest involving Maggie Gyllenhaal and her son.  Anticipation for hearing “The Weary Kind” propels the performance-heavy, but plot-light Crazy Heart into a stronger film.

George A. Romero’s 1973 original film, The Crazies, is a cult classic for horror fans, but has never crossed into the mainstream consciousness like Romero’s zombie films.  The low budget original is awkwardly-made but charming. Ambitions fly a little too high and the story performs a balancing act between horror film and government conspiracy thriller.

Because of the original film’s faults, The Crazies seems like a likely candidate to be remade.  The premise is strong; what if a small town was infected with a disease that made everyone lose their sanity and become violent towards friends and family?  A modern remake of that concept could certainly provide some scares if done well.

Director Breck Eisner’s 2010 reimagining of The Crazies begins promising enough.  The opening shot depicts the town ablaze in flames with seemingly no survivors.  A title card reading “TWO DAYS EARLIER” leads us into the story proper and shows the same town peaceful and intact.  The device gives a ticking time bomb feel to the movie and promises the mayhem to come.

The first 30 minutes of the film contain a slow burn tension uncommon in many modern horror films.  A brief scene taking place on a baseball diamond is genuinely suspenseful.  A sequence involving an infected father going after his wife and kid is also a highlight and reminds of the dynamic of The Shining.  These early exciting moments build a great sense of dread and give the feeling that the rollercoaster ride is just beginning.

Then the government gets involved and the scope of the movie is blown wide open.  The genre changes from an isolated-setting horror movie to an action/thriller.  The creeping dread is replaced by action set pieces, some of which are exciting (a sequence involving a car wash stands out) and some of which feel derived from an average shoot-em-up zombie movie.

Most of my disappointment in The Crazies comes from the abandoning of the premise.  Instead of making the transformation of the infected humans gradual and suspenseful, all of a sudden the town is overrun with brain-dead killers who may as well be classic zombies.  The military element adds a wild card to the mix, but the more interesting element remains the Crazies themselves.

Even with the genre change, the movie wants to inject as many jump scares as possible.  Expect many instances of characters reaching out and grabbing another character by the shoulder, while a loud music cue gets an automatic jolt from the audience.  The frequency of the false jump scares dulls the horror element, but plays into the feeling of a cheap thrill ride.

But is the cheap thrill ride fun?  Yes, in many sequences the ride is worthwhile and exciting.  However, The Crazies succeeds in individual scenes and set pieces as opposed to being a wholly satisfying experience.  For a horror remake released in February, you will rarely see a movie that succeeds this well.  It’s not especially smart filmmaking, but it most definitely isn’t dumb.  The Crazies won’t show you anything you haven’t seen before, but can still be solid fun and even contains some high excitement in key scenes.

Overall Rating:  3 out of 5