TOY STORY 2
STARRING: (voices of) Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Kelsey Grammer, Wallace Shawn, Jim Varney, John Ratzenberger, Don Rickles, Wayne Knight DIRECTOR: John Lasseter (co-directed by Ash Brannon & Lee Unkrich) WRITTEN BY: John Lasseter, Peter Docter, Ash Brannon, Andrew Stanton
Way back in 1995 (just slightly more recent than the Dark Ages in computer-graphics terms), Pixar Animation Studios unveiled the first Toy Story. It was a technological and visual wonder, the first-ever completely computer animated feature film. More importantly to distributor Disney, it became the third-highest grossing animated movie ever. Four years later, we have George Lucas pioneering the idea of "Synthespians" with a certain floppy-eared pariah. Fortunately, we also have Toy Story 2, that rarest of sequels that outranks the original in every way (except, of course, originality, but in this case that's no big deal.)
This time, Buzz Lightyear has to lead his owner Andy's other toys on a danger-fraught adventure to rescue the old cowboy doll Woody, who has inadvertently fallen into the greedy clutches of a toy collector. The plot thickens when Woody meets the other members of his 'complete set' (including a felt horse, a feisty cowgirl, and Stinky Pete, a grizzled old prospector still mint in the box) in the collector's office and realizes he's a valuable part of toy history. Woody has to choose either his owner and friends, or a permanent place of honor in a Japanese museum with his new family.
While the resolution of this dilemma may be somewhat more obvious to older audience members than kids, getting there is no less fun. The movie is liberally sprinkled with clever in-jokes (the chess-playing geezer from Pixar's Oscar-winning short 'Geri's Game' shows up in a cameo), referential gags (post-Sputnik 'space toys' are derided, and the riffs on Star Wars happen early and often), and hilarious one-liners that will fly right over the heads of the sprogs while getting big laughs from their parents. Better still, Disney's recent trend away from musical numbers has left Toy Story 2 with only two: a lovely but depressing Sarah McLachlan tear-jerker and a rehash of Randy Newman's "You've Got A Friend In Me" from the first film. In both cases, the songs become critical plot points instead of momentum-killing distractions. Obviously, the computer graphics are much improved (check out the trees and the family dog's highly realistic coat), but the truly remarkable achievement is that after a while, you stop noticing them and focus instead on the characters. Much of the first film's look-at-me graphic wizardry has evolved into more stylish and effective imagery. Like the French impressionists they subtly mention in the film, Pixar's army of programmers, animators, and renderers may one day be regarded as the first and finest examples of a new kind of artist.
One quickly gets the sense watching this movie that Lasseter and his gang have never stopped playing with their toys. In their world, a toy doesn't come to life until a child plays with it. Collectors, with their glass displays and hermetically sealed imaginations, are the enemy. In the real world of eBay bidding wars and Pokemon extortion, that's a fine message indeed, and Toy Story 2 delivers it with matchless creativity and invention. It'll make you wonder whether all those toys you loved as a kid miss you as much as you miss them.
GRADE: ***1/2
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