Toy Story 2 is a truly unique film. Very few sequels are capable of standing on their own, let alone be even remotely entertaining. Most sequels, including virtually all the Disney-distributed ones, are either disposable or actually undo the drama that existed in the first film. Pixar avoids all the pitfalls that plague sequels in Toy Story 2, a film which is arguably better than the original.
Once more, Tom Hanks and Tim Allen return as the voices of Woody and Buzz Lightyear, two toys owned by a little boy named Andy. Despite their differences - Woody is a rather old-fashioned lanky singing cowboy-type and Buzz is a plastic space warrior with plenty of battery-powered gizmos - Woody and Buzz complement each other very nicely. Hanks and Allen also do a great job at voice acting and are the best voices in a very high-quality voice cast that includes alumni from the popular NBC sitcoms Seinfeld and Cheers.
I don't wish to give any of the plot away, but the film revolves around the meaning of being a toy. Are toys best thought of as children's playthings? As collectibles? As mass-marketed commodities? As nostalgia? The film addresses all of these possibilities in an amazingly nonpretentious manner, alternately sentimental (courtesy of Sarah MacLaughlin's gorgeous vocals in one song) and hilarious (courtesy of the voice actors and animators). Wayne Knight, perhaps best known as the odious postman Newman on Seinfeld provides the voice for an odious toy collector who wants to send Woody to a collector's museum in Japan.
There are some very nice sequences in the film. The opening of the film actually takes place inside a Buzz Lightyear videogame and contains some neat Star Wars parodies. It's worth mentioning that Pixar's animation far outclasses that in George Lucas' obnoxiously irritating The Phanton Menace. The second great sequence in the film is a Howdy Doody style segment in which Woody learns that he is a toy based upon a TV puppet. And, of course, there is the beautiful Sarah MacLaughlin sequence.
Technically, the film is even more amazing than either Toy Story or A Bug's Life. Lately, I've been dabbling a lot with the computerized landscape generation progam called Terragen, so the realism of modern compuer graphics doesn't surprise me very much. To someone who hasn't any experience with the photorealistic results of a good computerized drafting program, Toy Story 2 will be doubly breathtaking. The technology has advanced to such a level that many scenes could pass for live action, especially the backdrops. In fact, in some areas, such as the animation of the "real" people in the movie, one gets the feeling that Pixar's animators are holding themselves back from the temptation to be too literal. All of the lighting advances made in A Bug's Life are included here, along with improved personality animation. And no, I didn't think it was possible for Pixar to have improved even more.
Although distributed by Disney, this is not a Disney movie at all. Pixar are not nearly as conservative as the Disney artists. The humor is genuine, not forced. The musical numbers are integrated into the storyline, and not diversions from it. The character designs are original, not in a "house style." One gets the feeling that Pixar's animators - as opposed those of virtually every other animation studio today - actually take the time to observe behavior, rather than simply copy it. Better animation schools require life drawing classes, but too often this leads to better draftsmanship but not better observation techniques. Pixar's animators are the most stunningly talented bunch of people since the Disney animators of the 1930s. They make the difficult look so easy, it is easy to take them for granted.
Unlike any other animation studio today, Pixar seem to be moving towards a totally new method of film making. I can't wait to see what they do next.
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