Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995)

Toyed are us

Toy Story is a warm, witty, precisely paced entertainment. It has all your favorite toys, featured in one movie. It has the voice of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, two proven actors with a pair of Oscars and several hundred million in boxoffice between them. It has wall-to-wall state-of-the-art computer graphic effects designed to pop your eyes out if you’re not careful. It has the multimedia might of the Walt Disney conglomerate behind it for heavy marketing muscle. It’s going to be the biggest hit of the year. 

The heart of the film, however, isn’t the computer graphics or the movie stars or the Disney machinery at all; it’s John Lasseter. The miracle, after all, isn’t so much that the entire movie was conceived in a hard drive, but that the movie that resulted could be funny and entertaining. I don’t think it matters that computers were used; the producers might have opted for stop-motion photography and the movie would still work, as long as they use Lasseter.

Lasseter’s secret as he describes it is his ability to think about toys as if they were alive; to put himself in their situation and imagine what for them are their fears their desires their goals. He gets into the mind of characters like Woody (Tom Hanks) so thoroughly that we feel what Woody feels when a state-of-the-art plastic spaceman has replaced you as playmate in a boy’s heart. Lasseter with the accuracy of imagination has put his finger on a toy’s worse fear: its dispensability. The very definition of the word “toy” implies that it’s something you can’t take seriously, something to manipulate, throw about a while, ultimately toss aside. A plaything, nothing more.

The movie itself looks as if it’s prepared to take a key role in Disney’s master plan at world domination. Think of it: a killer opportunity to plug products-- toy manufacturers will pay through the nose, beg on their knees, sell their children’s organs to have products in the picture; millions of dollars and you haven’t even started filming. You can dream up all kinds of merchandise-- action figures, t-shirts, lunch boxes, semiautomatic weaponry-- with the logo on them and they’ll sell twice as fast (bullets not included).

Who doesn’t want to watch toys have funny adventures? Children all over the world will love this. You could put a subliminal message-- “Buy Disney Products;” “Jeffrey Katzenberg Is A Jerk;” “Death To The Unbeliever”-- and viewers will swallow the message, no questions asked.

What do you call two billion people marching in step with Buzz Lightyear’s laser buzzing in one hand and his Karate Chop Action arm swinging away in the other? The end of the world as we know it.

Maybe I exaggerate. I like the movie but because it’s a likable movie in the hands of a soulless multinational entity-- that thought gives me pause. Weren’t we expertly handled, our emotions thrown about? Weren’t we eventually dismissed to spread the word, invite people to join? Didn’t we end up feeling like a plaything, a passing amusement-- something to be toyed with, perhaps?

5.2.96