RogerBW's Blog

1999 animated action/comedy, dir. Ash Brannon / John Lasseter / Lee Unkrich, Tom Hanks, Tim Allen: IMDb / allmovie. What is the righteous path to take in your life?

Well, all right, I wasn't expecting a discussion of salvation by faith versus salvation by works in this film for children. But that's what we get: Woody, always the voice of orthodoxy through this whole series, says that the righteous act is to belong to a child and be loved and played with, even if it's an ephemeral good, even if it damages or destroys you. Meanwhile Stinky Pete says that it's more important to keep yourself uncontaminated by the world, and focus on the next life. This is more or less exactly the religious argument.

Of course the film comes down on the side of works. I have some sympathy; people who buy things and keep them in the wrapping aren't using them for the purpose for which they were designed, not to mention making the things harder to find for everyone else.

There are even more questions raised this time round. In the first film it would just about have been possible to say that toys come to life when they're loved (stretch a point for the aliens). Here? Stinky Pete is mint in box, he's never been loved by a child, and yet he's conscious. Since his manufacture?

I also felt there was a major missed opportunity when Buzz sees the hundreds of toys exactly like him. What, no exploration of what it means to be an individual? No "I am unique because Andy loves me"?

There are some decent action sequences; the baggage sorting area was probably an homage to Die Hard 2, but I did like the train-clambering tropes being played out on an airport baggage cart, and my favourite was probably the road-crossing.

Also I lust after that multiply-cantilevered toolbox. Which lets me forgive the erection joke.

I talk about this film further on Ribbon of Memes.