TOY STORY 2
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: It is difficult to imagine anyone not
having a good time with TOY STORY 2. The kids will
love seeing the familiar toys in an adventure and
adults may well appreciate that at the heart of
this film is a difficult moral dilemma. There is a
lot of humor and there is also some genuine
intelligent consideration of the premise. This is
Pixar's best film to date and a considerable
improvement even over the original. Rating: 8 (0
to 10), high +2 (-4 to +4)
Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and the whole gang of TOY STORY are back in a sequel that has all the sophisticated special effects and a more complex story. The adventure is a little more extravagant. But even more important the toys face concerns that will be even more resonant with the adults in the audience than with the children who would appear to be the target audience.
The second TOY STORY opus opens with a space-opera fantasy featuring that commander of the limitless ether, Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Tim Allen). It seems at first out of context but serves stretch the capabilities of Pixar and to introduce Buzz Lightyear's video game enemy, the Emperor Zurg. This sequence soon leads us to a familiar bedroom where toy owner Andy is headed for Cowboy Camp and planning to take with him Woody (Tom Hanks). But it is not to be. A last minute injury leaves Woody sidelined on the shelf with an arm nearly coming off. Andy's mother makes matters even worse for Woody by reminding Andy that toys don't last forever. This stokes Woody's fears of abandonment. In fact, a yard sale that very day is planned to remove a friend from the toys' midst, a penguin squeeze toy. Woody saves the penguin only by venturing into the yard sale. There he is recognized by a local sleazy toy collector and toy store owner as a valuable collector's item. Woody it seems was modeled on a popular cowboy TV marionette from the 1950s. Woody in stolen in order to complete a set for the collector. Woody it seems has a family he has never known about--a girlfriend, sidekick, and horse. They are now a complete set and can come out of storage and make people happy. But to do that, Woody can never return to Andy. Somebody has to lose. Children's films often have characters choose between good and bad, but rarely between one good cause and another one.
There are certainly films made with scripts a lot worse than the first TOY STORY film, but TOY STORY 2 is a much more satisfying script. This is actually surprising since seven different people worked on the story and script. That generally is a very bad sign. But the script manages to have some resonance without losing a good sense of humor including several laugh-out-loud jokes. There are multiple film allusions including a very funny one to JURASSIC PARK. The makers have recognized that Bo-Peep, the only female toy of the first film, left a lot to be desired in character complexity. Jessie (Joan Cusack) as the toy based on Woody's TV girlfriend has her own agenda.
Pixar's main stock and trade is, of course, computer animation. So an important question is how does this film look? Much of the animation technique will be familiar from the original TOY STORY. That does not break new ground. Andy looks no more real than he did in the last film. That could be attributed to continuity. But this film adds two new human characters: Bad guy Al McWhiggin and the Cleaner. The Cleaner has just a cameo and looks to be the title character from Pixar's Academy Award winning short "Geri's Game." McWhiggin is overweight, middle-aged, and balding. He appears to be their most realistic looking human figure to date. They also have a nice dachshund puppy. Generally Pixar keeps the number of characters with physically soft surfaces to a minimum as they are probably much harder to animate. (Notice that their early character Luxo is make of rigid pieces. The bugs of A BUG'S LIFE had shells.) Attention to detail is particularly nice. Apparently their layout artist is usually good and often excellent. Note touches abound like that after McWhiggin has eaten cheese puffs his fingers appear yellow orange.
Just as the classic BLACK BEAUTY has at its heart the tragic and cruel ways that insensitive humanity treats horses, TOY STORY 2 shows that a toy's life is a bleak affair. While the first TOY STORY saw a toy's life as being played with or being boringly left on the shelf, the new film hits at some fairly disturbing material having toy society echo some of the worst of human society. Old friendships can be broken up at the whim of the owner or the owner's parents. A moment of careless play leaves Woody without the use of one of his arms. This leaves Woody haunted by the fear of what will happen when he is broken or Andy gets too old to play with him. There is ahead for him the oblivion of being dropped into the wastebasket. But some toys have even worse things to fear. Jessie and Stinky Pete have recent memories of the living oblivion of being in storage in a dark closet. Stinky Pete has never even been out of the tight confines of his original wrapping. Hiding within the charming children's film is a very dark and bleak look at the life of toys and disturbing shadows of the human condition.
If there is a problem with the new story it is flaws in its logic. If there is a Prime Directive for living toys it has to be this: Leave no physical evidence that living toys have been present. Without giving details, let me say that the script blatantly violates that directive. The humans would realize at the end of this film that something is going on that is more than meets the eye. Also this episode creates questions that it needed to answer. If Woody were a character from a 1950s TV show, that would mean that the toy must have been made in the 1950s. Woody would have a great deal of previous life, probably with another owner. Does he remember this previous life? How did a 45 year old toy get into Andy's collection? The ending of the film is telegraphed by the logic of what Pixar would and would not be likely to do with the series.
TOY STORY 2 is an excellent example of a sequel that is more worth seeing than the original film. It most certainly is not a disguised remake as sequels too often are. I rate it an 8 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1999 Mark R. Leeper
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