Toy Story 2
First order of business: This is the best family movie since...well, whaddaya know, Toy Story. Naturally, it doesn’t give off the shock of innovation that its predecessor did (being, after all, the first full-length computer-animated feature), but innovation isn’t everything. “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag” may have been the breakthrough, but it took two more years for The Hardest Working Man in Show Business to drop “Cold Sweat.” With Toy Story 2, Pixar brings the funk.
From its thrilling opening space battle montage on, Toy Story 2 is as witty, inventive and above all fun as the original, and more skillfully directed to boot. Not only does it strike a perfect balance between broad comedy for kids and subtle wit for adults (or vice versa, let’s be fair to the shorties in the audience), but it manages to subtly deliver a moral dilemma amidst the hijinks that is as genuinely complex and strangely moving as any ostensibly adult drama. This being a children’s movie we expect a happy ending, but that the dilemma even exists (and whose conclusion for some time seems truly in doubt) gets TS2 a big Bravo from me for treating children as intelligent beings capable of pondering A Big Question: is it better to suffer the certainty of eventual separation for the chance to be briefly loved, or retreat into safe but emotionally dead isolationism?
All this, couched in a search-and-rescue mission that, while patterned after the first movie, drives the plot with even more creativity and humor. The idea of animating toys was some stroke of mad genius – not only can the target audience intimately identify with the anthropomorphism, it provides a perfect marketing vehicle and above all allows for wildly ingenious visual treats. The stunts the animators pull with an Etch-A-Sketch and Slinky are fabulous, and the scene featuring Malibu Barbie’s beach house is uproarious. What little screen time the humans are given is just as effective – Andy’s narcotic dismissal of Woody is actually chilling.
While I think “Home Improvement” was a treacly blight on the already blasted landscape of prime time television, Tim Allen is perfectly gruff and militant delivering some of the film’s best lines as both Buzz and his mass-produced doppleganger, and newcomers Joan Cusack (Jessie The Cowgirl) and particularly Kelsey Grammar (Prospector Pete) are just as effective. The reliance on Star Wars references got a bit heavy (the Jurassic Park reference, however, was hilarious) and I could have done without the Sarah McLachlan tune incongruously plunked in the middle, but these are the slightest wisps of complaints. Forget I even mentioned them. Just grab the kids and have a helluva time. And if you’re childless, just grab an extra one from the mall and go. Or if that’ll violate your parole, give me a call – a film this dizzying, entertaining and subtly thought-provoking, I’d gladly sit and watch again.
- Jared O'Connor
MOVIES
All Content © 1997, 1998, 1999 Jared O'Connor and Michael Baker