Parents' Guide to Toys & Pets

This Chinese animated adventure should appeal to grade-school kids. The animated toys of Toys & Pets will feel familiar, if not redundant, for fans of the Toy Story franchise, but the storylines and fantasy worlds invented for the dwellers of a Chinese tea shop and a sewage drain netherworld might feel less familiar. Unpredictability isn't necessarily a draw for younger viewers, but for animation enthusiasts the novelty could prove appealing. This is especially true for the film's imaginative sewer world, inhabited by evil rodents and a mystical, all-knowing figure (reminiscent in several ways of The Wizard of Oz) that draws all manner of toys seeking wisdom.

The musical score is used effectively to create moments of enchantment and magic, like an underwater scene with colorful fish and a slow-motion sequence of Nathan maneuvering across a boiling pond filled with menacing toads. There's also an intriguing subplot in Toys & Pets, especially considering the film was made in a country with strict censorship rules like China, that involves the robot Timebot refusing to be "controlled" or condemned to a life of following orders. The two main characters here learn the value of both individualism and being free from outside control.