I was astonished upon the release of the first Toy Story movie. It seemed as though we had gone from drawing mice with three definite circles for a head, and ducks with no trousers, to complex realistic computer animation almost overnight. There wasn’t that much in the way of commercial computer animation before the release of the film, only a few short stories, which were nowhere near as complex, and far less amusing, so it came as a real shock to me. When the sequel was announced a couple of years down the line, most people were, as you might expect, extremely excited about the prospect of another great Disney movie. Others, however, were, in some respects, a little disappointed. Is it right to abuse the name of a movie just to get ratings, when it was almost certainly going to be a very poor follow-up to what was a milestone in movie making?

The story is based in America, where a young boy named Andy, lives with his sister, dog and mother (in that order?) in a very typical family-size house. Andy owns a collection of toys, all of which he has acquired from different places over the years, of which his favourites are ‘Buzz Lightyear’, a ‘space ranger’ (whose voice is played by Tim Allen) and who fights off evil in a fictional modern television show, and ‘Woody’ (whose voice is played by Tom Hanks), a cowboy puppet from a 50’s television show. Woody, as it turns out, is a collectable item, and there are plenty of people after him, being the rarest in the set of cast on his outdated show. When Woody is accidentally added to the garage sale that his mum is having in order to get a bit of extra cash, he is snapped up by a collector, and the other toys, all of whom talk and walk when not in human sight, attempt to save Woody, before he and his friends are all taken off to a museum somewhere in Eastern Asia.

--- The characters ---

--- The animation and special effects ---

One particular scene, though, is one that I will always remember as one of my favourite ever film moments. The opening scene features the ‘Buzz Lightyear’ computer game, a make-believe game, but one which one of the other characters is playing on in the movie (bare with me, it will hopefully become clearer). The combined idea and lighting techniques used in the animation within the first three minutes really grab the viewer, so much so that it’s hard to concentrate on anything else after the amazing effects of the action, when Buzz is chasing after the evil emperor Zorg. The animation is so spectacular that you can even interpret what materials he’s walking on, and the attention to detail is unbelievable. There is one stage where the lights go off, and you can only see him due to his reflective clothing, which, again looks extremely life-like.

In the film’s predecessor, ‘A Bug’s Life’, the idea of fake out-takes at the end of the film was introduced (the idea being that, since it was an animated piece, there shouldn’t be out-takes, since the actors aren’t real). They are continued in ‘Toy Story 2’, and they even feature ‘Flik’ and ‘Heimlich’ from ‘A Bug’s Life’ in them, which is a clever idea, making the characters more realistic, in a sense, in showing that even they can make mistakes. The out-takes are shown at the end of the film with the credits.

--- Ideal age? ---

There are several special features that come with the movie. First up is a ‘preview’ of the newly-released ‘Monsters Inc.’, a new animated movie from the same producers as the Toy Story series. Secondly, there is a short animated Pixar movie. As with other discs in the series, this short-movie is a demonstration of some of the very early basic computer animation that made Pixar such a respected company in the field of animation. It’s simple, but still entertaining, and a nice extra feature that I’d like to see more of on other discs.

--- Quality of Picture ---

--- Price ---

--- Recommend it? ---