The film’s one really substantial and lasting achievement is the introduction of a new character, Forky (Tony Hale), a toy literally assembled out of trash who initially resists his new role as a playmate. Setting aside the interplay between Buzz and Woody (effectively tabled in this installment), the primary business of the franchise is a) elaborate chases b) bits of business for the side characters, both of which get a good workout here. 4 is lighter on its feet, containing at least five good jokes and much less aggravating freneticism. A friend thinks it’s more about Stalinism, another notes that “any ethnic cleansing situation would be applicable”-which, of course, is a desirable reaction to have to any children’s movie. It made me think of the Holocaust, and I know I’m not the only person who had that reaction (although showing it to a group of children and pausing it at regular intervals to discuss the parallels is a bit much, maybe). Toy Story 3 thematized the capitalist anxiety of losing your target audience by having Andy grow up and get rid of his toys, a stand-in for the kids who grew up on these films-would a new generation, weaned on repeat DVD viewings (presumably), be around to keep filling the coffers?Īrriving a full 24 years after the first installment (long enough for CG water to finally be mastered I’m impressed) Toy Story 4 improves on its misbegotten predecessor, an unceasingly loud affair that climaxed with weirdly intense imagery of the toys on a conveyor belt heading towards an incinerator. Meanwhile, Allen has transitioned from merely retrograde to actively objectionable Fox News guest. Death, of course, has come for the franchise by now: Jim Varney, voice of Slinky Dog, is long gone, and the late Don Rickles’s unused vocal tracks were scoured for a few lines to repurpose for his beyond-the-grave reprise of Mr. This affective property, of course, does not extend to animated films, especially ones whose protagonists are toys that, by definition, do not accrue frown lines or jowls I suppose you could run Tim Allen and Tom Hanks’s voices through vocal spectrum analyses and compare/contrast with 1995 waveforms, but they basically sound the same. This was baked into Twin Peaks: The Return but has funny side effects in much less credible endeavors: e.g., in the barely notable American Reunion, just by virtue of surviving with personality unchanged this long, Seann William Scott’s Stifler has acquired an unexpected dignity. In live action, returning to a property that’s grown more respectable with age has the inherent pull of both nostalgia and the inherently manipulative (but no less genuine) melancholy of seeing how much everyone has aged. My next thought was that Apple had inadvertently provided a solid metaphor for the eternal franchise era: assuming all goes as planned, it is not inconceivable that there will be Star Wars movies coming out after my death, certainly not an expectation I grew up with. A few weeks ago, Apple dropped a staggeringly ill-advised promoted tweet into my timeline: “With the longest battery life in an iPhone ever, you’ll lose power before your iPhone XR will.” I enjoy thinking about death even less than the average person, so my first reaction was that I’m not particularly cheered by a poorly worded suggestion that I’ll probably exit before my technology.
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