Same story, new dimension

Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in 3D

Sequels are a tricky business. It seems to be a general rule of thumb that no sequel is ever as good as its predecessor, and each subsequent film seem to get worse. It is almost impossibility that the second film could ever be better than the first.

Toy Story ranks as one of those impossible anomalies (joining Godfather 2) where the second film, in the what is soon to be trilogy, is as good as the first – if not fractionally better. I am of course talking about the storytelling here – not the computer animation. Of course Toy Story 2 has better animation, it was made later and Toy Story was obviously ground breaking at a time then computer animation was considered a ‘gimmick’ (much like 3D is at the moment).

Ten years on, and it may look a tiny bit dated – the storyline is as strong as ever – and they are still two fabulous films, which make many of the films around then (and even today) look particularly light on both content and humour.

A decade after the release of Toy Story, both films have been re-released with the added bonus of 3D. The addition of 3D doesn’t detract from the story at all, just adds a nice new dimension. They have been released as a double feature with the quaint (for my children) attraction of a 10-minute interval between the two films which sparked an interesting conversation with my three children about the fact that all films used to have an intermission. They seemed to accept this bit of information about as readily as they accepted the little tidbit that there were no computers or television when their grandmother was a girl. With complete and utter disbelief…

They are all children who have grown up with animation. I am an avid collector of children's animation in particular and the particular obsession hasn’t waned as my children have gotten older. They have become somewhat savvy as I rarely include crappy animation in our home collection. Their current favourite is the brilliant instant classic ‘Ponyo’. So I was pretty eager to see what they made of the films particularly seeing if both could hold the attention of my fidgety 7 year old.

I shouldn’t have worried. Both films moved seamlessly into one another after the 10-minute interval and it was quite a treat actually to see them both end on end. The humour is as strong now as it was then with very little seeming dated or facile. There are still plenty of in jokes to keep the adults happy, and visual gags to keep the small people amused.

Two films for the price of one – and 3D to boot! And plenty to whet our appetites for the forthcoming Toy Story 3. Excellent!

By Anya Brighouse, February 2010.