starring : ( voices of ) tom hanks , tim allen , joan cusack , kelsey grammer , wallace shawn , jim varney , john ratzenberger , don rickles , wayne knight director : john lasseter ( co-directed by ash brannon & lee unkrich ) written by : john lasseter , peter docter , ash brannon , andrew stanton way back in 1995 ( just slightly more recent than the dark ages in computer-graphics terms ) , pixar animation studios unveiled the first toy story . it was a technological and visual wonder , the first-ever completely computer animated feature film . more importantly to distributor disney , it became the third-highest grossing animated movie ever . four years later , we have george lucas pioneering the idea of " synthespians " with a certain floppy-eared pariah . fortunately , we also have toy story 2 , that rarest of sequels that outranks the original in every way ( except , of course , originality , but in this case that's no big deal . ) this time , buzz lightyear has to lead his owner andy's other toys on a danger-fraught adventure to rescue the old cowboy doll woody , who has inadvertently fallen into the greedy clutches of a toy collector . the plot thickens when woody meets the other members of his 'complete set' ( including a felt horse , a feisty cowgirl , and stinky pete , a grizzled old prospector still mint in the box ) in the collector's office and realizes he's a valuable part of toy history . woody has to choose either his owner and friends , or a permanent place of honor in a japanese museum with his new family . while the resolution of this dilemma may be somewhat more obvious to older audience members than kids , getting there is no less fun . the movie is liberally sprinkled with clever in-jokes ( the chess-playing geezer from pixar's oscar-winning short 'geri's game' shows up in a cameo ) , referential gags ( post-sputnik 'space toys' are derided , and the riffs on star wars happen early and often ) , and hilarious one-liners that will fly right over the heads of the sprogs while getting big laughs from their parents . better still , disney's recent trend away from musical numbers has left toy story 2 with only two : a lovely but depressing sarah mclachlan tear-jerker and a rehash of randy newman's " you've got a friend in me " from the first film . in both cases , the songs become critical plot points instead of momentum-killing distractions . obviously , the computer graphics are much improved ( check out the trees and the family dog's highly realistic coat ) , but the truly remarkable achievement is that after a while , you stop noticing them and focus instead on the characters . much of the first film's look-at-me graphic wizardry has evolved into more stylish and effective imagery . like the french impressionists they subtly mention in the film , pixar's army of programmers , animators , and renderers may one day be regarded as the first and finest examples of a new kind of artist . one quickly gets the sense watching this movie that lasseter and his gang have never stopped playing with their toys . in their world , a toy doesn't come to life until a child plays with it . collectors , with their glass displays and hermetically sealed imaginations , are the enemy . in the real world of ebay bidding wars and pokemon extortion , that's a fine message indeed , and toy story 2 delivers it with matchless creativity and invention . it'll make you wonder whether all those toys you loved as a kid miss you as much as you miss them . 
