Toy Story 2

What is fascinating about 1999 is that the three most fascinating films released that year all contain great pathos regarding the rupture of innocence and the chasm that threatens to tear apart the generations. However, while Julie Taymor’s Titus and Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant both chronicle this thematic with wondrous results, it is ultimately John Lasseter’s Toy Story 2 (1999) that most haunts me. While the film is bereft of nihilism, its exploration of how all children eventually abandon that which made them so as they grow older became a critique that cut right to the bone, and its pathos is never exploited but merely observed, which itself becomes a testimony to the maturity with which Lasseter and Pixar treat their material.

Andy, the boy who owns all the toys, leaves behind the aging Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) as he goes off to camp, and a conniving toy collector, Big Al, snaps him up at the family yard sale. While Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and the rest of the toys plot a way to spring the toynapped Woody, Woody himself is confronted with the reality that a boy’s love toward his toys always comes to an end, either mutating into an eye toward capital gain (as we see in Big Al) or simply evaporates with time (as we fear with Andy). Even as Woody is repaired and newly minted for resale by Big Al, he must combat a less than fulfilling reunion with his TV show’s partners in the form of Stinky Pete, all while nurturing along a (relatively) platonic relationship with Jesse the Cowgirl.

The film’s metacommentary on the guilt and abandonment of childhood reaches its nadir when Jesse sings the lilting “When She Loved Me,” a song mourning the loss of her former owner. Likewise, the depression that sinks into Woody’s every fiber as he himself works through his fears of abandonment become the centerpiece to what is ostensibly a celebratory children’s tale, granting the film a complexity of emotion that Pixar has still to top. It is this undercurrent of honesty that allows the film to balance on both ends of the scale as the film ends—perhaps Andy will soon tire of the toys, but the love that he feels for them now is enough, which itself isn’t much different than the ultimate articulations of why should we be that Woody Allen or Ingmar Bergman come to their strongest films.

Beyond the meticulous animation design, the film scores major props for using the angelic voice of Sarah McLachlan. Moreover, while the film never indicts children, it offers a gentle reminder to them to be as loving as careful with their toys as they are with their real-life counterparts, for how we act around our toys seems to be how we act around others. A beautiful, melancholy film, yet still imbued with so much life.

Toy Story 2: 10/10