Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley, 2019)

Discussions of specific films and franchises.
Message
Author
User avatar
Monterey Jack
Joined: Fri Jan 12, 2018 1:27 am

Re: Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley, 2019)

#51 Post by Monterey Jack » Sun Jun 16, 2019 4:26 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Sun Jun 16, 2019 4:11 pm
That’s a really good point. I think many a 90s Kid has had that feeling of watching a movie years later and going, “Oh, that already funny on its own Simpsons joke was a reference to this!”
On one of the Simpsons DVD commentaries, Matt Groening cracked that, if they assembled all of their Citizen Kane parodies from over the decades in chronological order, they'd almost be able to re-create the entire movie. :) That's what a smart, well-written spoof/satire can do...act as a treasure trove of Easter Eggs that will make the movie or show funnier in retrospect when you return to it years later and suddenly "get" references you didn't the first time around. But if it's something akin to Vampires Suck or whatever, all you're left with are dunderheaded "jokes" where the characters just parrot recent movie lines verbatim and expect you to laugh just because, hey, I totally heard that in another movie recently! No satire, no tweaking of the source material to underline what might have been unintentionally humorous about it in the first place (and a po-faced movie series like the Twilight franchise was rife for parody), just Xeroxing someone else's funny/iconic cinema moment and adding fart noises over the top.

User avatar
Lost Highway
Joined: Thu Aug 29, 2013 7:41 am
Location: Berlin, Germany

Re: Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley, 2019)

#52 Post by Lost Highway » Mon Jun 17, 2019 2:24 am

Exactly. Animation films like the ones by Pixar take inspiration from other films all the time but these references blend into the film. They aren’t the type of blatant name dropping of the likes of Family Guy or many of the early DreamWorks movies.

User avatar
swo17
Bloodthirsty Butcher
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
Location: SLC, UT

Re: Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley, 2019)

#53 Post by swo17 » Wed Jun 19, 2019 2:18 pm

Discussion of Tim Allen's politics moved here

User avatar
TMDaines
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:01 pm
Location: Stretford, Manchester

Re: Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley, 2019)

#54 Post by TMDaines » Sat Nov 16, 2019 8:12 am

Watched this last night. I think the third film is an utter masterpiece with a climax that both delivers high stakes adventure and ends up leaving you sobbing. I had no need for another Toy Story film after that. It simply won’t be beaten. That said, I love all three films, so was surely going to have a good time here, however...

This just feels like another film for the sake of continuing a franchise. It’s perfectly good, even very good at times, but it isn’t in any way great and I suspect will fade from memory. The major problem is pacing of the plot is wrong. How many times did we need a heist/escape from the antiques shop? You could have knocked a good 20 minutes off and had a better film.

A lot of the original cast are marginalised too, and I don’t sense the new entries will build a following, possibly Duke Caboom aside, but that’s even a rehash of Buzz. I’m sure there’s interesting criticism to be done on the evolution of the Bo Peep character, who is the most zeitgeisty creation you’ll ever see. Does Toy Story need a Strong Independent Female Lead though? Toy Story should surely always be about Woody and Buzz.

Strangely I found the climax to the prologue to be a lot more moving than the end of the film; unrequited love is always more romantic.

Post Reply