2010 animated action/comedy, dir. Lee Unkrich, Tom Hanks, Tim Allen: IMDb /
allmovie. Growing up is
a thing now.
This definitely feels like the midlife crisis film for me.
Everything passes, and the best you can hope to do is continue the
cycle. But also this film had a troubled genesis: before Disney bought
Pixar, they made serious efforts towards a Toy Story film with their
own new animation unit, Circle Seven. (Tim Allen said he was happy to
jump on board with the new corporate overlords; everyone else was a
bit more cautious.) Well, it would certainly have been cheaper than
using Pixar again.
But now Andy is getting older and going off to college. Woody of
course says as he always does that you should trust in the old god;
everyone else, like desperate people everywhere, falls for the cult's
recruiting pitch, the promise of something better using the framework
of the old religion so that the suckers feel comfortable ("you'll be
played with every day forever"). And it's even a classic multi-layer
scam: once they realise that they don't get all the good stuff just
for joining up, they're told that they can their way up by putting in
their time and not complaining – and doubtless this would turn out to
be just as much of a lie.
The prisoner-of-war film parody was done better in 2000's Chicken
Run, though this has its moments. Don't ask silly questions about
where Mr Potato Head's consciousness resides, or you might get
answers. Stereotyped Castilian Spanish Buzz – well, at least it's not
a parody of an ethnicity that the primary audience would be likely to
have opinions about already. (Don't ask why his memories can be reset
electronically.)
And the ending is blatant emotional manipulation – but it works, even
on me. And it promises an actual ending to the narrative: the cycle of
toys going from child to child can in theory continue forever even as
individual children age.
I talk about this film further on
Ribbon of Memes.
Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.