As the third installment of Toy Story 3 winds down, you have to a regular Mr. Potatohead not to at least hold back a tear or two and not want this magical story to end.

Toy Story 3 (and see it in 3D if you can) starts with a great chase scene, probably the most imaginative one you are going to see all summer, featuring all of Andy's toys.

Poignantly, it is a flashback. Andy's mom is looking at video of Andy when he was a boy and Buzz, and Woody and the gang were the most important things in his life. Andy is 17 now, and he will be going off to college in just a few days.

And as moms do, it is time for Andy to clean up that room of his and get rid of the stuff he doesn't want. So Andy has to make some hard choices. He is going to take Woody with him to college, but Buzz and the rest of the toys have been relegated to a trash bag to be stored in the attic.

The nice touches start immediately. Those green army men see the writing on the wall, and they go A.W.O.L out the window.

Instead of the attic, the trash bag winds up at the curb, and the garbage truck is coming down the road.

They escape in time, of course, but now fate has them at a daycare center for little kids instead.

Oh, they would have been so much better in the attic.

After years of being ignored by Andy – Hamm, Rex, the Potatoheads etc. think they are going to a place where they will be appreciated and played with every day. But that idealism ends quickly.

Without giving away too much plot detail, the daycare is run by a sweet looking (and he smells like strawberries) cuddly bear, named Lotso (Ned Beatty), who runs the place like a Southern prison farm. And there is no escape.

Other new toy characters include a very strange baby (one of Lotso's trustees) and Ken (voiced by Michael Keaton), yes that Ken, who is living in Barbie's Dream House and has a wardrobe Barbie would envy and Mr. Pricklepants, a Shakespearean kind of hedgehog voiced by Timothy Dalton.

The voice characterizations are better than ever (Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Don Rickles, Estelle Harris, John Ratzenberger all return) and the animation is amazing. It would be nice to see a side by side comparison to watch the original Toy Story, where this brilliant bit of animation began, playing along side Toy Story 3 to see just how far the process has progressed in 15 years.

There is hardly a dull moment in Toy Story 3. The climax escape is right out of Indiana Jones (the superior first three films, another near perfect trilogy) and the ending will make you realize just how much we care about this group of toys.

Pixar has an amazing record dating back to 1995 and it is hard to imagine any other animated film taking top honors in that category in 2010 come Oscar time.

Critic's rating: A-

Toy Story 3 is rated G for everyone but a few scenes may be intense for the youngest children