Because all great trilogies come in threes

I'm hearing from people whose opinion I respect that Toy Story 3, which opens across the country today, is actually the best film in the series.

From Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly:

"...even with the bar raised high, Toy Story 3 enchanted and moved me so deeply I was flabbergasted that a digitally animated comedy about plastic playthings could have this effect. ... Fifteen years after Toy Story, its heroes look more old-fashioned and analog than ever. They really are relics in a world of techno gizmos. Yet all they've ever wanted is a home, and in the supremely moving final scenes of Toy Story 3, their simple desire to be played with is the furthest thing from selfish. It mirrors a child's own essential need to indulge her imagination through play. Toy Story 3 is a salute to the magic of making believe."

From Richard Corliss of Time:

"Like Andy, the Pixarians — from creative director John Lasseter on down — are smart kids who never renounced their childish belief that anything is possible. Why, to make an instant classic like Toy Story 3, it just takes an unfettered imagination, several hundred artists and technicians, about $200 million and four years of nonstop work. Child's play."

From Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal:

"To appreciate the magnitude of the achievement, it's useful to remember what Toy Story was, and what the trilogy has come to. From the start its essential elements were friendship, innocence retained in the face of adversity, and abiding love dramatized with beautiful clarity—the love between Andy and his toys that fostered a similar relationship between the movies and their audience. Here we are, a significant part of a lifetime later, and, almost miraculously, the filmmakers have sustained their original impulses, and found an ideal ending for the characters in their care. I won't tell you what that ending is, but it took my breath away, and I'll bet it takes yours. Do see this lovely film sooner than later."

From Claudia Puig of USA Today:

"This installment, the best of the three, is everything a movie should be: hilarious, touching, exciting and clever. ... The tale touches the heart as no movie in recent memory has done. Who would think a movie about plastic toys could speak so powerfully to audiences of all ages?"

There is more, from the New York Times ("As sweet, as touching, as humane a movie as you are likely to see this summer."), the San Francisco Chronicle ("Toy Story 3 is a better film than Wall-E and Up in that it succeeds completely in conventional terms. For 103 minutes, it never takes audience interest for granted. It has action, horror and vivid characters, and it always keeps moving forward."), and others, but you get the idea and I'm beginning to sound like a newspaper ad.