Toy Story 2 (1999)

When Woody is stolen by a toy collector, Buzz and his friends vow to rescue him, but Woody finds the idea of immortality in a museum tempting.

Directors:

John Lasseter, Ash Brannon,

Writers:

John Lasseter (original story), Pete Docter (original story),

Stars:

Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack

Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 19 wins & 20 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Tom Hanks	...	Woody (voice)
Tim Allen	...	Buzz Lightyear (voice)
Joan Cusack	...	Jessie the Yodeling Cowgirl (voice)
Kelsey Grammer	...	Stinky Pete the Prospector (voice)
Don Rickles	...	Mr. Potato Head (voice)
Jim Varney	...	Slinky Dog (voice)
Wallace Shawn	...	Rex the Green Dinosaur (voice)
John Ratzenberger	...	Hamm the Piggy Bank (voice)
Annie Potts	...	Bo Peep (voice)
Wayne Knight	...	Al the Toy Collector (voice)
John Morris	...	Andy (voice)
Laurie Metcalf	...	Andy's Mom (voice)
Estelle Harris	...	Mrs. Potato Head (voice)
R. Lee Ermey	...	Army Sarge (voice)
Jodi Benson	...	Tour Guide Barbie / Barbie on Backpack (voice)

Storyline

While Andy is away at summer camp Woody has been toynapped by Al McWiggin, a greedy collector and proprietor of "Al's Toy Barn"! In this all-out rescue mission, Buzz and his friends Mr. Potato Head, Slinky Dog, Rex and Hamm springs into action to rescue Woody from winding up as a museum piece. They must find a way to save him before he gets sold in Japan forever and they'll never see him again!

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Plot Keywords:

toy | collector | rescue | friend | yard sale | 

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Taglines:

"Oooh...3-D" (USA 2009 re-release)

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Genres:

Animation | Adventure | Comedy | Family | Fantasy

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Certificate:

G

Details

Official Sites:

Disney Norway Official site [jp]

Country:

USA

Language:

English Arabic

Release Date:

24 November 1999 (USA)

Also Known As:

Toy Story 2 in 3-D

Box Office

Budget:

$90,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

£149,604 (UK) (4 February 2000)

Gross:

£1,832,385 (UK) (29 January 2010)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Studios

Technical Specs

Runtime:

92 min 82 min (TV)

Sound Mix:

DTS SDDS Dolby Digital

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

When Hamm is flipping though the channels looking for the Al's Toy Barn commercial, all the other stations show clips from shorts and commercials Pixar produced through the years including Luxo Jr., Red's Dream, Tin Toy, and Knick Knack. There is also a logo for the NeXT computer developed by Pixar's then CEO, Steve Jobs.

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Goofs

When the toys cross the road under construction cones, they cause a semi to jackknife and a multiple car pile up. Not very much later, when Al and the toys drive back across the street to his apartment, the traffic is flowing free on the road.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Buzz Lightyear: [landing on Zurg's planet] Buzz Lightyear to mission log: All signs point to this planet as location of Zurg's fortress, but there seems to be no signs of intelligent life anywhere...

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Crazy Credits

The names of 29 children born to crew members during the 3 year production are listed.

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Connections

References Battlestar Galactica (1978)

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Soundtracks

"When She Loved Me"
Music and Lyrics by Randy Newman
Performed by Sarah McLachlan
Sarah McLachlan appears courtesy of Arista Records, Inc. and Nettwerk Productions, Inc.

User Reviews

Battling Films

Shucks, my original comment for this was deleted. Here is a replacement.

My admiration for Pixar to date is significant, on the order of rat filmmakers that seem to care about ideas in film. There aren't enough of these, so if you find one (here a collective) that not only has intelligent notions of cinema but also make successful movies, you have to celebrate.

Overall, I think this is the weakest of the Pixar films, because it is the least visually adventuresome. What they did instead was explore what I call folding and did so in the written bits, following a pattern where films include the dynamics of other films in some way. "Blue Velvet" and "2001" are sort of landmark films along these lines, where film types become actual characters. Here the folding is just as radical, perhaps more so because the story overtly mirrors what they are doing.

Here's the setup. Buzz — actually an army of Buzzes — draws his existence from space movies, specifically "Star Wars." Woody draws his from cowboy movies (actually TeeVee shows) specifically "Howdy Doody." Each prototype "doll" gets pulled into his original cosmology. That's the background, what usually serves as the establishing world for a movie. Pixar even uses this in the first shots where other movies work to introduce us to a world.

Within this movie in the movie context is a foreground story: about the value of "play" which we are reminded is a re-enacting or borrowing of stories. Its what life is, I think and we are reminded in the script. They'd trade one day of human play (meaning recovered movies) for an eternity in a sterile heaven.

I know that there are many in Hollywood who talk about this sort of story dynamic. There are few that would dare to build a film around it, and very, very few who could do it, make it as visible, overt as it is here, and have audiences be happy for such immersion in reflective dynamics.

Interestingly, the original comment was tossed by IMDb along with a couple hundred others of mine because I failed in a similar enterprise. Someone complained because the original included an observation about religion being recovered narrative and increasingly recovered cinematic narrative. That reader at least did not like such baptism.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.