1995 animated action/comedy, dir. John Lasseter, Tom Hanks, Tim Allen:
IMDb /
allmovie. What if the
toys could, like, come to life, man?
I find this a very odd film, looked at with my current critical
eye: on the one hand it celebrates and encourages imagination, with
toys going on adventures together, but on the other it puts up firm
walls: do not imagine beyond this point, or the ground drops away and
it gets very dark indeed.
These conscious beings, after all, exist at the whim of a child who
doesn't even regard them as alive. They can be ignored, or lost, or
destroyed, and they have to accept that these are things that happen
and they can't control. They're in terror of being "replaced". So when
these people who've known each other for years instantly turn on each
other when they meet a minor setback… I think they're in a constant
state of subconscious existential terror, wanting to enjoy their brief
moment of Being Played With but knowing that the eternal darkness can
come for them at any moment.
Buzz arrives believing he's a space ranger. The other toys have met
new toys before, so the fact that they find this surprising suggests
that it's not a usual way for a toy to be. But it's always treated as
a matter for humour or aggression, never help or sympathy. Crazy
people are funny.
(And he goes limp whenever Andy is present, just the way the others
do. Even though he thinks he's a real space ranger. Why does he do
that?)
As something of a connoisseur of computer graphics I don't find the
primitive imagery here distracting - except occasionally when it moves
to the real world, particularly the dark filling station floating in
the void, the sort of thing I'd be modelling myself a few years later.
I talk about this film further on
Ribbon of Memes.
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