Toy Story is our strongest reason to recommend John Lasseter: he makes a household quarrel between toys matter. His computer animation works because the characters can be selfish, irritating and still worth caring about.
Fi1m perspective
In Toy Story (1995), Woody and Buzz Lightyear make sharing attention look like hard work. John Lasseter takes their rivalry seriously, keeping the quarrel at the centre of an adventure that could easily have become too busy. Woody is allowed to irritate us; Buzz’s certainty is allowed to be ridiculous. We felt for Woody even when he annoyed us, because the fear of sharing attention was so plainly behind his bad behaviour. This is why we recommend Lasseter’s film well beyond the audience for children’s animation.
Tin Toy (1988) had already put character at the centre of his computer animation before Toy Story became Pixar’s first feature. What interests us in the feature is the weight and solidity of the toys: they look like objects we could pick up. Lasseter allows enough time to enjoy that familiarity without holding up the comedy for a technical demonstration. The animation also keeps their conversations expressive, so the film does not need constant activity to hold our attention.
Ed Catmull’s long technical partnership with Lasseter and Andrew Stanton’s story work on the Toy Story series also make it worth resisting the idea of a solitary inventor. On screen, Tom Hanks and Tim Allen give the quarrelling much of its force. Lasseter trusts their voices enough to keep a conversation interesting, though Randy Newman’s music sometimes presses harder than it needs to. The actors have already made the feelings clear.
Lasseter followed Toy Story with A Bug’s Life (1998) and Toy Story 2 (1999), expanding Pixar’s feature work and then demonstrating that the toys could support a sequel. With Cars (2006), vehicles took the place of toys as objects given human relationships. The more formulaic Cars 2 (2011) is a reason to be selective about the later directing work. Start with Toy Story, especially if family animation has come to seem too anxious about making everybody likeable.
Biography
John Lasseter is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and animator. He was born in Hollywood, California, on 12 January 1957 and trained at the California Institute of the Arts.
Lasseter began his career as an animator at Walt Disney Studios before joining Lucasfilm's computer graphics division. He became a founding member of Pixar in 1986 and directed the studio's first feature, Toy Story (1995). He also directed A Bug's Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), Cars (2006) and Cars 2 (2011), and served as executive producer on numerous other Pixar films including Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), WALL·E (2008) and Up (2009).
From 2006 to 2018 he was chief creative officer of both Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. He has won two Academy Awards: for the short film Tin Toy (1988) and a Special Achievement Award for Toy Story.
