Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
10/23/09
Most
popular movies wield some sort of influence over the films that follow
them, if in no other way because writers start including their names in
their “It's X meets Y” pitches to studio executives. But there are
only a handful that can say they “changed everything” in a lasting or meaningful
way. Nothing “changes everything forever”, of course, since given
a few decades something else always comes along to shift the paradigm again.
For instance, who could ever have imagined in the early 90's that animated
films would be as popular as they are today and yet you'd essentially never
see one that seems influenced by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?
The reason why? A nuclear explosion of everything-changing proportions
that hit on November 22, 1995 in the form of Pixar Entertainment's first
feature-length release. And because Toy Story did change everything
for the animated films that followed, Pixar is understandably hesitant
to allow their crown jewel to become old hat, in the same way George Lucas
keeps giving his everything-changing Star Wars trilogy a technological
makeover every few years. Thus, here in the fall of 2009, moviegoers
got a look at a double-feature of Toy Story and its' excellent sequel
shined up and looking better than ever in state-of-the-art 3D.
Andy
(voice of John Morris) is a little kid who loves his toys. As the
movie opens, we watch him enact a full Western drama with Little Bo Peep
(Annie Potts), Mr. Potato Head (Don Rickles), and a plastic dinosaur named
Rex (Wallace Shawn) playing supporting roles to his favorite, Sheriff Woody
(Tom Hanks). But little does he suspect that his toys love him right
back: when he goes downstairs for his birthday party, the playthings
spring to life, obsessing over the family's coming move to another house
(everybody needs a moving buddy to make sure they don't get lost) and what
sort of new toys might be joining them after the party. To learn
more, they send the Sergeant (R. Lee Ermey) and his squad of toy soldiers
down to do some recon. Aside from books and board games and clothes,
only one new toy joins Andy's collection, but it's a doozy: Buzz
Lightyear (Tim Allen) is a Space Ranger with all the bells and whistles
you could hope for, even his very own laser; well, at least a light bulb
that shines red when you hit a button. Problem is, Buzz doesn't realize
he's just a toy and believes himself to have crash-landed on a strange
planet of toy-like creatures. The new space toy quickly becomes Andy's
favorite, relegating Woody to second place, a position as unwelcome to
the cowboy as it is unfamiliar. In a moment of weakness, he conspires
to knock Buzz behind the dresser, hoping he'll be lost, but instead sends
him flying all the way out the window and into the bushes below.
One thing leads to another, and soon Andy's favorite toy is a long way
from home, and Woody's only hope of being accepted back into Andy's room
is to bring him back. To do so, he'll have to brave every toy's worst
nightmare: the Mean Kid across the street, who loves to conduct mad
experiments on toys... when he's not blowing them up.
After
a nice 5-minute intermission hosted by the characters, Toy Story 2
follows. Shortly after the events of the original, Woody's psyched
to join Andy at Cowboy camp, but an accidental tear of his arm leads to
him not only being left behind, but exiled to the dusty Top Shelf.
There, he finds Wheezy the Penguin (Joe Ranft), a squeaky toy with a broken
squeaker. It turns out that Mom (Laurie Metcalf) was lying when she
said she was taking him to be repaired and instead just stashed him up
in the dust where no toy would hear his calls for help. Worse yet,
before Woody can do anything about it, he's thrown into a Yard Sale box
and taken outside. The Cowboy stages a daring rescue mission, and
succeeds in getting Wheezy back home, but himself falls into the clutches
of the sinister Al (Wayne Knight), proprietor of Al's Toy Barn. It
seems that he's searched for years for an original Woody doll to complete
a collection that also includes Jessie the Yodeling Cowgirl (Joan Cusack),
Bullseye the Horse and Stinky Pete the Prospector (Kelsey Grammer).
As Woody learns from the other dolls, their characters were a cultural
phenomenon in the 50's until the launch of Sputnik turned the Nation's
attention from cowboys to space toys. Now, Al has a megabucks offer
from a Japanese toy museum to sell the complete set. At first, Woody
just wants to go back to Andy's room, but the others, particularly Pete,
who's still sealed in his original, unopened box, convince him that the
fickle attention of a growing boy will last only a few years, while in
the museum he'll be safe forever. Meanwhile, Buzz, Rex, Mr. Potato
Head and Slinky Dog (Jim Varney) have set out on a rescue mission that
takes them into the bowels of Al's Toy Barn itself, where they meet Tour
Guide Barbie (Jodi Benson), another Buzz, and his arch-nemesis, The Evil
Emperor Zurg (Andrew Stanton).
It's
easy to forget just how revolutionary the original Toy Story screenplay
is simply because it's become the template for just about the entire animated
comedy genre in the years that followed: take an inanimate object,
animal, or fantasy creature and give it a fully functioning society based
on our own that runs under our noses. But what sets it apart from
its' successors is not just that it was first, but how much it's able to
do with the idea. Yes, the toys bicker and scheme and have crazy
adventures, but they also FEEL, and both movies are unafraid of the fact
that the “life” of a toy is a brief period in the spotlight followed by
an uncertain future. This is particularly acute in Toy Story 2,
where we meet the other Woody's Roundup toys who've spent so much time
packed away that they teeter on the brink of madness. A montage set
to Sarah McLachlan's “When She Loved Me” reveals how Jesse had been the
favorite toy of a girl who outgrew her is as dark and heartbreaking as
anything I've ever seen in a family movie. The toys live in constant
fear of this sort of abandonment, being lost, sold, or thrown away, making
their existence a truer mirror of our own than any similar movie I can
think of. Both stories are in essence about “people” learning to
conquer the fear of death and live in the moment. Half of Hollywood
worked on these screenplays (7 different credited writers on both movies,
including most of the big Pixar names and Geek God Joss Whedon), but they
got the job done: the stories are as thematically rich as they are
delightful.
And
they ARE delightful. In making toys into living things, that army
of writers has stuck to reality when it comes to what they can do (to “fire”
his laser, Buzz has to push his own button, for instance), and then let
their imaginations run wild in working around those limitations.
And we meet not only one room full of nifty characters, but several other
worlds full of them. In the original, it's the bedroom of the evil
Sid, whose mad experiments produce scary hybrid toys who ultimately descend
upon their maker like the creations of Dr. Moreau. In the sequel,
it's a toy store full of new friends and foes.
The
great toy designs (in many cases cribbed from the real thing) combine with
iconic vocal work to make these characters icons. Hanks is drawing
on version 1.0 of his screen persona, the 80's movie comedian who's perpetually
frustrated and outraged by the craziness around him, but it's also his
voice's Jimmy Stewart decency and sincerity that make him a perfect choice
for a cowboy doll. For reasons unknown, Tim Allen emerged from his
TV success with vast untapped reserves of William Shatner in him, and his
two best movie roles (the other in the instant classic sci-fi comedy Galaxy
Quest) involve channeling the erstwhile Captain Kirk. As Buzz,
he strikes just the right balance between delusional and sincere heroism.
It somehow seems right that Mr. Potato Head should be hostile, and of course
there's never been a more delightfully hostile comedian than Rickles.
The late, great Jim Varney added his trademark homespun goofiness to the
Slinky Dog, while Wallace Shawn's frantic vocals are a perfect fit for
the less-than-intimidating dinosaur Rex. In the sequel, Cusack has
just the right balance of cowgirl pluckiness and bitter heartbreak as Jessie,
and Kelsey Grammer sounds just like an old prospector.
These
are the first movies I've seen retrofitted for 3-D (having yet to see The
Nightmare Before Christmas under those conditions), a process currently
being done to the aforementioned Star Wars movies. Hard to
say how it will play with live action, but the work here is flawless.
You'd never suspect these movies weren't originally made in the format,
and their clean, colorful, shiny plastic surfaces seem tailor-made for
it. I marveled at the way you can tell a real tactile difference
between Woody's plush surface and Buzz's plastic one; at how the creases
in plastic that give Rex “scales” have real dimension, and how the skin
of the evil Al looks just like the real deal even while his form remains
stylistically animated. Long-time readers know I enjoy the liquids
and reflective surfaces in 3D movies just as much as the more pronounced
“pop-up book” effects, and the reflections in particular here are as good
as I've seen.
I will
concede that watching any two sequels back-to-back is an exercise in revealing
how the original establishes a template the sequel follows like a Mad Lib.
But while parts of Toy Story 2 may play as simple expansions of
its predecessor, it does retain the spark of creativity that made it special.
And all these years later, dozens of copies have failed to live up to the
durability of both invention and pathos that make Toy Story a genuine
animated classic. No matter how many dimensions it's in. |
