Solid Sequel Lacks Some Fun

Rating: 7/10 (12 May 2004)

In addition to pushing the envelope in what animation could do, "Toy Story" was such a crowd-pleaser it was a no-brainer to make a sequel. To their credit, the creative team at Pixar used their brains anyway. "Toy Story 2" is enjoyable, at times rousing entertainment the whole family can enjoy, but the sometimes clumsy attempts at injecting seriousness into the first movie have become much more overt and annoying.
What's right with "Toy Story 2"? A lot, beginning with the eyepopping improvements to the animation technology just four years brought. In "Toy Story," in 1995, the human characters like Sid and Andy's baby sister looked more cartoonish than the toys, while Sid's vicious pet Scud looked like an escapee from a late-'80s Commodore computer game. By 1999, the humans are so lifelike it hurts, especially if you are fat and balding like Al (and me.)
Add to that a clever story arc that allows Woody the cowboy doll (voiced by Tom Hanks) to leave Andy's room and discover his true origins, which turn out to be a great deal more impressive than he imagined. A Howdy Doody-like relic of the 1950s, Woody turns out to be quite a prize antique, especially when paired with fellow members of his old Roundup Gang, as assembled by Al, the owner of a giant toy retailer who has stolen Woody from Andy's mother and plans to sell the set to a big-money collector in Japan.
The revelation of Woody's past is pretty clever, especially when we see excerpts of his old show with hilariously bad marionette work. The comedy involving the greedy, porcine Al (Wayne Knight) is well-done, as is the emergency work back in Andy's bedroom to get Woody back where he belongs. The once-acidic Mr. Potato Head (Don Rickles) turns out to be quite the whipped spud now that there's a Mrs. Potato Head (Estelle Harris) in the room. "I packed your angry eyes, just in case," she says, and it's dynamite voice casting, like so much in the first movie.
I never quite got into the Roundup Gang, however. Joan Cusack tries too hard as the spunky cowgirl Jessie, while Kelsey Grammer, terrific in his work as the Simpsons nemesis Sideshow Bob (an obvious inspiration here) brings nothing new to his role here. They are so dull that you wonder why Woody would even think of spending his time with them.
It's ironic that the creators said the story was designed in part to deal with the limited availability of Tom Hanks, because I missed Tim Allen more in this one. Actually, he has a dual role, as two different Buzz Lightyears, one being the space action figure we saw in the first movie, the other being an upgraded version freed from Al's Toy Barn who joins the rescue mission. But the original Buzz, now that he's with the program, is a pale echo of his old self (which was more of a friendly, fair-playing rival of Woody's than a second banana) while the new Buzz recycles a lot of the fish-out-of-water lines old Buzz had in the first film, because, like old Buzz in the first film, he's just out of the box and doesn't know what's what.
The movie goes off into some strange existential territory for a while, about the futility of a toy's existence which takes itself very seriously. Woody decides to leave Andy, seeing clearly a future where the boy will chuck him for more grown-up pursuits. One comment I read here asks if this is right; that many children, seeing this movie, might be reluctant to give a toy to charity, which is what we see happen to Jessie here. Worse crimes have been committed in the name of art then discouraging toy donations, but it does feel like this film is advocating an unnaturally backward position upon its core audience.
Yeah, okay, enough dime-story philosophy. You will have a good time watching "Toy Story 2" if you liked the first one, and most people did. It's funny, fresh, and exciting, especially with the rescue mission, and the animation is spectacular. But why do people say this is the better film? Other than the technology, it's in every way a lesser product.