Heaven forbid  I didn't like it

Rating: 3/10 (20 September 2004)

I'm starting to wonder if there is a purgatory for people like me who actually admit to people that they don't like mainstream films that 'Everybody Loves'. Like 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' and just about every Meg Ryan film, I just plain didn't like 'Toy Story 2.' (I can hear the audible gasp.) It's not that I am completely jaded when it comes to 'kids' films  or even more specifically Pixar films  I think I chuckled once or twice during the original 'Toy Story' and I actually liked 'Finding Nemo.' While I'll admit that I was basically forced to watch those two films and 'Toy Story 2 for that matter actually, just because it is on the IMDb Top 250 list, I am not afraid to assert that I enjoyed the former two. The latter though. Ugh.
'Toy Story 2' basically picks up where the first left off, the conflict this time being that Woody is stolen and is about to be sent to a Japanese museum with three other toys from his 1950's television show. The other toys he normally hangs out with have to try to rescue him before this happens.
I chuckled once, and that was when they showed the 'Rock-em Sock-em Robots.'
That was pretty much all I could muster for this film, which I found to be boring and lame. The story was topical in terms of the whole 'collector' idea, sure. But it was flat and just plain banal. I didn't find the little one-liners remotely endearing, and what I found nostalgic in the first one (the toys themselves) were old news by the second film.
I guess I'm not cut out for these kinds of films; either I expect a little more, or I just don't like typical kid's films. Unfortunately, when a film is released and people go absolutely nuts over it and tell me that I 'have' to see it, and it appears on the same list with films like 'Citizen Kane' and 'Annie Hall', I expect a higher-caliber offering, and others have to expect that there are going to be people who don't like the films that 'everybody' likes. 'Toy Story 2' is one of them for me. Sorry folks.
--Shel