TOY STORY 2: 4K UHD Blu-Ray (Disney/Pixar, 1999) Walt Disney Home Entertainment

At a then affirming $3 million dollar return on their investment Disney/Pixar's Toy Story was a marketing phenomenon utterly ripe for a sequel. And so, it received one in 1999 with the release of director John Lasseter's Toy Story 2; a far more ambitious and introspective, though perhaps not quite as emotionally satisfying follow-up. Intended, at first, as a 60-minute direct-to-video release, Disney green-lit the project for theatrical distribution after viewing a few rough reels of the impressive animation Pixar was lining up. Talks of a sequel began to circulate the moment Disney realized it had a runaway smash hit on their hands. The trick was, how best to capitalize on the original’s runaway success? Lasseter’s return to the fray was initially tempered by Joe Roth, who had ousted Jeffrey Katzenberg as chairman of the company. Roth conceived Toy Story 2 as another of the studio’s cheaply made direct-to-video forays. Some of these had actually proved quite profitable, made in half the time and on less than half the budget of a full-fledged feature. Relegating Toy Story 2 to this format, however, presented several problems, not the least the hefty pay scale required to get Tom Hanks and Tim Allen back for recording sessions. Meanwhile, Lasseter regarded the project as a great opportunity to groom new talent, turning to Ash Brannon, a young directing animator on the original Toy Story whose work he greatly admired.

Lasseter's story originated with placing himself in the mind of a toy – how would ‘he feel’ if the child that had loved him suddenly lost interest after growing up? To this basic concept, Brannon suggested the idea of a yard sale, where a wily old coot recognizes Woody as a collector’s item. From this brain-storming session emerged the obsessive toy collector - Al McWhiggin – whom Lasseter would later suggest was based on himself, with other ‘collectables’ owing their aegis to children’s television programming from the early 1950’s: Four Feather Falls, Hopalong Cassidy and Howdy Doody. Herein, Lasseter’s wife encouraged her husband to reconsider establishing a strong female protagonist to join the toys, and thus, Jessie – the cowgirl was born. Hosting a ‘story summit’ at his home, Lasseter, reunited with former colleagues, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter and Joe Ranft to iron out the details.

Despite all this preliminary work, it remained unclear whether Pixar would produce, as its staff of 300 were busy putting the finishing touches on A Bug's Life (1998). Thus, CEO Steve Jobs made the executive decision to shut down the Interactive Products Group, responsible for the gaming division of marketing materials, placing its staff of 95 on Toy Story 2.  Character models from the original Toy Story were given major upgrades, with supervising animator, Glenn McQueen pressing his animators to invest everything they had in improving the overall quality of the piece. Technological advancements allowed for more complicated camera set-ups. And while the work Lasseter had committed to was truly groundbreaking, Disney Inc. was unimpressed by the length of time it was taking to achieve. Lasseter worked tirelessly to complete A Bug’s Life, moving over to Toy Story 2 immediately, and, bringing along from that movie, Lee Unkrich as his co-director. After some debate, Disney executives, Roth and Peter Schneider elected to make Toy Story 2 a full-fledged theatrical release. The project proceeded until a near devastating moment that nearly cost the company everything: an accidental deletion of supposedly local files, spreading to purge Pixar’s mainframe of nearly 90% of all its already completed work. As backup had somehow miserably failed, Lassester and his team faced the real possibility all was lost until it was discovered that technical director, Galyn Susman, working from home to take care of her infant, had managed a hard drive copy of virtually everything wiped out at the studio, preserved for posterity on her home computer. These files were promptly reinstated.

Dissatisfied with what had already been done, Lasseter petitioned Disney for more time to rework the project. This request was denied. So, Lasseter entered into an arrangement to have the entire movie ready to roll in less than nine months, a daunting task, resulting in exceedingly long hours, with much physical strain put on the animators. To ease to toll, Lasseter brought in a full third staff to handle the overload. Reworking the story elements to accommodate a 90 min. cut, Lasseter and screenwriter, Pete Docter eventually patched together a crazy quilt of narrative threads that begin with Woody (Tom Hanks) having to face his own ‘toy’ mortality after his human Andy (John Morris) accidentally rips off his arm. Mistakenly discarded, but rediscovered at the family’s garage sale by an obsessive collector, Al McWiggin (Wayne Knight), Woody is later stolen and taken to Al’s shrine of forgotten toys. At Al’s apartment, Woody is introduced to the other toys of his vintage and design - Cowgirl Jessie (Joan Cusack) and Stinky Pete (Kelsey Grammer) who eventually convince Woody his future is with Al and his plans to sell them all to a toy museum in Tokyo. In the meantime, having witnessed Woody's kidnapping, Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) arrives at Al's apartment with a litany of Andy's toys in tow. Buzz comes face to face with a newer model of his self - who has yet to realize he too is a toy – and, also, Emperor Zurg - his television arch-nemesis. In the resulting pandemonium, Woody is packed away by Al along with Jessie and Stinky Pete, and, carted to the airport on route to Tokyo. But all is not lost. Buzz has a showdown with Stinky Pete and Woody and Jessie are rescued and returned to Andy's house. In the final moments, a sobering message emerges; although time erodes every toy's usefulness and popularity with their human counterparts, there is a friendship among these cast-off plastic play things, likely to forever endure.

Toy Story 2 is ambitious in its story-telling. Yet, there is something too frenetic about its pacing to make the story completely work – even likable - much too much plot and subplot to overwhelm 90-mins. of screen time and over-stimulate the audience, especially the youngsters in attendance. Unlike the first movie, there is no opportunity here for the audience to relate to the new toys: Jessie, Stinky Pete and the others are one-dimensional personalities at best. Cowgirl Jessie is particularly dissatisfying, as the last act of this movie is meant to stimulate a growing romantic attachment between her and Woody, never evolved elsewhere in the story. The visuals in Toy Story 2 easily best anything seen in the first movie. That said, like the congested plot, there is too much going on in this visual design, a lot of it becoming busy for the eye to ever momentarily settle on and admire. In the final analysis, Toy Story 2 is not a terrible sequel. But it does fail to meet the fundamental requirement of being blissfully entertaining, to envelope, inhabit and populate beyond the fanciful realm of a child's imagination with a simple - not simplistic - appreciation for the art of make-believe.

The 4K UHD Blu-ray release of Toy Story 2 is comparable to the upgrades made to the first movie, already reviewed on this blog. The original elements were rendered in 1920x1080i resolution, later remastered in 2K for the standard Blu-ray release. There is a definite uptick in the visuals, more crisply refined details, more robust colors, and, decidedly more attention paid to cleaner, more vibrant specular highlights. Unfortunately, the 2160p picture also reveals some mild color-banding and instances of aliasing and edge enhancement. Can’t be helped, I suppose. Another uptick for the Dolby Atmos mix, with subtler nuances in underscore and SFX detected throughout. Dialogue remains crisp and clean. Again, for those with less discerning home theater set-ups, or even those for whom it’s all about ‘seeing’ monumental differences, Toy Story 2 is not a 4K disc to truly show off the virtues of ultra-hi-def to their fullest advantage. While everything does improve, many will be hard-pressed to identify exactly where and by how much such improvements make this a worthwhile double-dip. There are NO extra features on the UHD disc. Mercifully, Disney Inc. has included the old Blu-ray release – with no video upgrade, but incorporating barely an hour of goodies, covering production, tests, marketing, scoring – you know…the basics. Bottom line: if you were hoping for some massive upgrade, you can sincerely pass here. Yes, Toy Story 2 looks better in 4K than it does on Blu-ray – but you really need a critical eye to make that argument stick.

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

4

EXTRAS

2