Toy Story

It's tough to imagine a time when computers didn't reign over every and any thing. Though the computer animation-less past seems distant, there was once a time before we bowed down to our benevolent microchipped masters. While now computer images are pretty ubiquitous in animation, just fifteen years ago it was a new and innovative technology seeking to revolutionize animation as we know it. Oh, and to tell us stories about cowboys and astronauts. Mainly the cowboys and astronauts thing.

While now Pixar is a booming enterprise churning out hit after adorable, heartwarming computer animated hit, back in the early 90s they were still in the startup category. Sure, it had been around 10-odd years or so, but it had yet to give us a full length feature film. In a decade that gave us Disney gold like Aladdin and The Lion King, expectations for animated movies were riding particularly high.

Luckily, the good people at Pixar delivered the goods. Pixar garnered some attention through their Oscar-winning short Tin Toy, a computer-animated film featuring a poor little abused tin soldier named Tinny. Tinny hides from his frighteningly abusive baby master and finds a slew of other quivering, humorously traumatized toys. Thus began the initial spark of the idea for Toy Story, which was at first set to star our pal Tinny. In the likely case that you've never seen the 1988 Pixar short film, here's your chance:



Pretty impressive for 1988, no? Sure, everything's a little wobbly and the action's a little choppy, but overall a valiant triumph for our friends at Pixar. Once the deal was signed to develop a feature-length film, producers updated their initial conceptions of the characters and Tinny morphed into the flashier astronaut Buzz Lightyear. All seemed to be going swimmingly for the Pixar folks.

Until, of course, big bad Disney came in and crushed their adorably lifelike computer-animated dreams. The script was going through a too-many-cooks scenario, suffering through innumerable rewrites and changes. In 1993, Pixar presented to Disney series of storyboards backed by a rough soundtrack. The work-in-progress featured seriously hostile and bitterly sarcastic incarnations of Buzz and Woody. Not exactly the kind of characters you'd go home and beg your parents for expensive video games of their further exploits.

Needless to say, Disney hated it. In fact, they really, really hated it. So much so that they put the kibosh on production. After some begging and pleading, the Pixar team was given an ultimatum: turn this film into something that will put butts in the seats or you're out of the game.

Original storyboard panel from Toy Story. We can only assume this frame depicts the original a-hole Woody.

Disney was also clear about its aims as financial guardian angel: the movie better be a serious cash cow. Disney was seeing falling ticket sales and saw computer animation as a potential vehicle to rev up their sales. One of Disney's major requests (and criticisms of the first draft) was that the movie appeal to both children and adults. Back at the drawing board, Pixar developed quirky little personalities for a slew of toys baby boomers (read: the people buying the tickets) would relate to: GI Joes, Slinkys, Mr. Potato Heads, and so on. With a renewed sense of purpose, Pixar set out to get back on track with the project.

Scrapping much of the initial work, Pixar's animators and writers worked diligently to make the movie stop sucking so horribly. Enlisting the virgin voice talents of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, the movie began shaping up. By the time of its 1995 release, the film had been sufficiently desuckified and far surpassed Disney's expectations by becoming a runaway success.

After so many reformulations, rewrites, and re-animations, Pixar somehow managed to pull it off. The movie told the story of Woody, a walking, talking cowboy toy who reigned supreme as favorite toy in Andy's bedroom.



Unfortunately, someone a bit more heroic was lurking in the wrapped birthday gifts. Woody is displaced by Buzz Lightyear, a newer, flashier astronaut toy. Really, much flashier. I mean, the guy had lights. How do you even compete with that when your main claim to fame is a pull-string with a few crappy recorded phrases? As you can imagine Woody becomes incredibly jealous, aiming to eliminate Buzz and once again reclaim his throne as top toy.




Meanwhile, horrifyingly terrifying toy torturer kid next door Sid is blowing up army men and reconstructing doll/robot hybrids. Buzz vows they will give him his comeuppance, but the other toys are justifiably skeptical. I mean, did you see Sid? That kid is scary, man.



Woody and Buzz get lost on the way to a family outing to Pizza Planet, but manage to stow away in a delivery truck. Buzz mistakes the claw machine for his spaceship and the two are stuck inside. They are unluckily captured by the sadistic Sid, and forced to bear their fate with plastered-on painted grins.



As you can imagine, hilarious antics ensue and the pair are forced to buddy up to battle Sid Vicious and his evil dog Scud. Buzz finds out he's just a toy, not the real Buzz Lightyear as he'd originally imagined. Yadda Yadda Yadda, heartwarming bonding and a daring rescue mission later, the toys are again safe and sound in Andy's house. A happy ending, minus a new puppy with untapped toy torturing potential.

The film was an enormous critical and financial success and spawned an extremely popular sequel. So popular, in fact, that its financial input outstripped the original's by over $100 million. Now that's popular. And lucrative! Color me impressed, then computer animate me so I can get in on some of this cash.

Though Pixar has since moved on to new things, our Toy Story pals are far from forgotten. In fact, they will be returning to a theater near you sometime around summer 2010. Here's the trailer to hold you over until then. They're hyping it up a lot, which is hopeful. This extremely long-awaited sequel comes so late in the game that Andy is headed to college. My, how the computer animated years fly by.

Beavis and Butthead

As I sit here watching a can't-take-my-eyes-off-this-trainwreck marathon of MTV's 16 and Pregnant, I have to wonder what exactly is going on at MTV. First Date my Mom, and now this? What happened to the far-superior, significantly less lazy programming of my day? Back when I was a kid, MTV had a little intelligence, didn't it? And before you say something, yes, I'm old enough now to get all crotchety about this. Before you know it I'll be hiking my pants up to my eyelids and complaining about that damned newfangled rock music.

While I reminisce about my MTV glory days, I accidentally contradict my inital proclamation of the golden age of intellectually stimulating programming by entertaining the notion of the show Beavis and Butthead. I know, I know, I should be mentally conjuring something more promising for my things-were-better-in-my-day argument, but I can't help it. After all, I already wrote about Daria, who more than cornered the market on intelligent, sharp-witted MTV original programming. And since Daria spun off from Beavis and Butthead, I can only hope this reflects on the quality of Beavis and Butthead themselves. After all, that little delusion is certainly easier than admitting a teensy bit of hypocrisy.

Anyhow, the series featured its eponymous cartoon stars, deadbeat high schoolers with a shared penchant for extreme obnoxiousness.


Despite their young age, for some reason we never really encounter any sort of parental figures. Beavis and Butthead were pretty single-minded, er triple-minded. Their lives revolve around the pursuit of chicks, nachos, and hardcore heavy metal. After all, what good would heavy metal be without a side of chicks and nachos?

That was pretty much it. Oh wait, did I mention that Beavis had a ridiculous alter-ago named The Great Cornholio? Because that part is sort of important. Whenever Beavis got all hopped up on caffeine and sugar, he morphed into El Cornholio and began seizing up and speaking in tongues. That's normal, right? He raises his arms Evita-style, puts his shirt over his head, and in a vaguely Spanish accent declares boldly, "I am Cornolio!" Sometimes just for kicks he'd also discuss the need for TP for his bung-hole. Oh, and he comes from Lake Titicaca. Heh.

Observe, a montage:



If you sat through that full two minutes and 17 seconds, bravo. You have an extremely high threshold for pain and under-the-skin irritants. Kudos.

Butthead (first name Butt, last name Head) was more of a charmer with his signature, "Hey baby". Who could resist that alluring cad? Between the braces and that adorable "heh heh, heh heh" laugh, I can't settle on a best feature.

And...that's about it. They have a neighbor and a teacher or two who sporadically show up as supporting characters, but generally it's just the two of them wreaking widespread havoc. They occasionally are employed at fast food joint Burger World, though their general incompetence in a long-running theme. Behold, their general slackerish incompetence:



As you can probably gather, the appeal of these characters was baffling. For some reason, the show ran an astounding seven seasons. SEVEN. Meanwhile, gems like Freaks and Geeks run for one. Riddle me that one, nineties kids. Riddle me that. I'm sorry to say I'm a bit ashamed of our collective inability to appreciate witty shows in favor of cackling over a couple of oversize-headed kids in Metallica and ACDC t-shirts. For shame, children of the 90s. For shame.

Beavis and Butthead wasn't all stupid, of course. Beneath the veneer of rudeness and outright obnoxiousness lay a thinly concealed layer of social commentary and witty observations. Of course, B&B themselves were too oblivious to make these observations themselves. Rather, the social criticism was tied to the fabric of the show, emphasizing the stupidity, laziness, and anti-intelligence of youth culture. It was a pretty multi-faceted approach at social commentary, though it probably didn't do much for viewers in terms of elevating youth culture. If nothing else, it probably taught many of them to light stuff on fire and delight in general idiotic mayhem. Maybe I'm just a cynic, but I think that qualifies as missing the point.

It wasn't all fun and games for MTV, though. A young child burned down his family's mobile home, purportedly influenced by Beavis's maniacal obsession with lighting things on fire. It was certainly tragic, though you have to wonder where the boy's parents were during this whole thing. As with other controversial shows, movies, and games, parents often expressed outrage that these characters were being portrayed as an idealized example.

They weren't, of course. It was a pretty thin argument. MTV began running a caveat before the show, saying:

Beavis and Butt-head are not role models. They're not even human. They're cartoons. Some of the things they do could cause a person to get hurt, expelled, arrested, possibly deported. To put it another way: Don't try this at home.

At the end of the day, that was the moral of the story. They weren't humans. They were cartoons. They weren't people to aspire to emulate, they were fictional characters and moronic ones at that.

Beavis and Butthead got the full-length feature treatment in Beavis and Butthead Do America, where they continued to terrorize the nation with their unapologetic stupidity:



The movie boasts a surprising 72% positive rating at rottentomatoes.com, suggesting that perhaps their juvenile sense of humor was enjoyed by more people than would care to admit it. Like any guilty pleasure, B&B provided us with laughter for things that we knew deep down we probably should not find funny. But we did. Because it was funny. Beavis and Butthead may have been a pair of music video-ragging idiot savants, but they were a lot more perceptive than people gave them credit for. Inadvertently, that is. The show was ripe with contradictions, but then again, so is real life. Heh heh. Heh heh.

Father of the Bride

Once upon a time, when Steve Martin was not busy making ill-advised career moves like The Pink Panther 2 and Cheaper by the Dozen 3, he was out there making some genuinely funny movies. In fact, Martin has appeared in a few of my favorite films, notably 1991's Father of the Bride, a remake of the 1950 movie starring Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor. In the 1991 version, Martin plays ultimate protective dad George Banks, hilariously hesitant to marry off his 20-year old daughter to a man she met while studying abroad. Between his worries of weakening the father-daughter bond and the inevitable bankruptcy sure to result from his daughter's desired lavish wedding, Banks has his hands pretty full.

Back in the early 90s, a movie didn't need to be raunchy and racy to garner laughs from audiences; indeed, Father of the Bride was only rated PG. It had a real it's-funny-because-it's-true type of quality to it, playing on the traditional child coming of age story from a parent's perspective. Martin plays George Banks, a middle-aged owner of a sneaker factory happily married to wife Nina (Diane Keaton) and with two children, the aforementioned bride-to-be Annie (Kimberly Williams) and much younger/most-likely-a-mistake son Matty (Kieran Culkin, aka Macaulay lite).

Banks' world is shaken when Annie comes home from one semester abroad with startling news: she's engaged to some guy they've never met. Annie reassures her dad that her mysterious betrothed is a good guy and that he is gainfully employed as a "independent communications consultant", whatever that means. Mom Nina is ecstatic but George's reaction is noticeably subdued. If anything, he seems downright opposed. Then again, the kid is 22 and has known the guy for all of a couple of months. You can sort of see where he's coming from.

To give you an idea of Martin's mental picture of his daughter at 22, here's a handy clip:



So while Banks still sees his daughter as an adorable plaited 7-year old, he is forced to accept that she is here claiming to be a grown up with the autonomy to make these kinds of decisions.

This is all, of course, before mother and daughter can slap a big ol' price tag on the whole shebang. While George is pretty unnerved just at the thought of losing his precious baby girl to some common independent communications consultant, he is downright apoplectic at the staggering costs of putting on a big to do for his daughter's wedding. At the opening of the film, George says in voice-over, "I used to think a wedding was a simple affair. A boy and girl meet, they fall in love, he buys a ring, she buys a dress, they say 'I do.' I was wrong. That's getting married. A wedding is an entirely different proposition."

So as they are not particularly equipped to plan the whole thing on their own they enlist the help of flamboyant wedding planner Franck Eggelhoffer, a man of unknown national origins with a strange accent that can only be the work of Martin Short. Franck also has his assistant in tow, the inexplicably Asian-with-a-Jewish-named Howard Weinstein. The awkwardly ponytailed Weinstein is played by B.D. Wong, and you can imagine my surprise the day I realized that that was the psychologist guy from Law and Order: SVU. I'll never watch another analysis of an assaulted jogger or molested nanny in the same way.

Franck is...eccentric, to say the least, though it seems his intentions are good. At times it's actually impossible to tell what he is saying through his mysterious European accent, so I can only assume his intentions are good. Observe as George fails to understand a damn word this Fraaaanck character says:



On top of all that, when the Banks' go to meet their future in-laws, they find out that they are totally and completely loaded. Aside from their lavish digs in Bel-Air, the Mackenzies also spring for a brand new car as a gift for the happy couple. Unfortunately for George, it sort of trumps his measly gift of a cappucino maker:



Throughout the movie George is all about the nickel-and-diming, going so far as to get all giddy when he finds out one of their potential guests is in fact deceased. All the more money to feed those live ones. Rather than reveling in the celebration of this soon-to-be hopefully blessed union, George is horrified to find that for his own family to attend their own wedding at their own house comes with a whopping price tag of $1000. And they want to invite the wedding player? What's next, swans? Oh wait, that part comes later.



George gets a little wacko, going so far as to end up in jail in a mad quest for hot dog buns. He comes out of his wedding-induced insanity long enough to reunite the bride and groom after a quarrel, pleased to still be able to play the hero. We get a cute if admittedly corny montage of Annie throughout the years, and it finally appears George is ready to relinquish the reigns on his daughter.

After all is said and planned and hopefully paid for, the wedding day arrives with a surprise snowstorm in LA. Like there's any other kind of snowstorm in LA. Needless to say, the swans Franck brings in are pretty pissed. Despite the minor hiccups, the whole thing goes off without a hitch and the neurotic overprotective George actually manages to relax long enough to let his daughter get married.



Sure it's all a bit cheesy, but you have to admit overall it's pretty sweet. Somehow in the midst of George's craziness and Franck's eccentricity, things come together and the whole affair is so nice it's worth the $100,000 they spent on it. Well, almost.