Published on Nov 10, 1997
There are certain videos in our household that I’m surprised
ever leave the VCR. For my wife, it would be
Sleepless In Seattle. For me, it would be either Motorhead’s
The Birthday Party or a bootleg tape of Led Zeppelin’s 1979
Knebworth performance. And then, there’s my three-year-old, who
would try to cram all her videos into the deck if she could. (She
hasn’t tried this yet, though I did find a few crayons lodged in my
VCR when she was younger.)
If it’s not Blue’s Clues, it’s Winnie-The-Pooh. If it’s not
Mulan, it’s
Toy Story. (Fortunately, since I’m nothing but a big, bent
kid myself, I like watching the Disney films 30 times a week.) Of
late, my daughter has been watching
Toy Story a lot – possibly because she’s formulating her
list to Santa. She’s been going over that movie with more scrutiny
than some people gave the Zapruder film.
Toy Story 2 is set for release in the theatres the day
before Thanksgiving – and something tells me that we’ll be in line
to see that before we go to my parents’ house for dinner. The
soundtrack to the film makes me think that if the action is half as
good as the music, then this film will topple its original.
Although I don’t claim to know the whole plot to the new film
(and wouldn’t give it out if I did), apparently one of the
discoveries in this film is that Woody (the character voiced by Tom
Hanks) once was a television star in the ’50s. As a result, a good
amount of the music is written around the theme of Woody’s once
bright past. From the opening track “Woody’s Roundup” (performed by
Riders In The Sky – or, for you kids out there, what a
real Western band sounds like) to some of the instrumental
cuts like “Jessie And The Roundup Gang” and “Woody’s A Star,” part
of the plot is clearly laid out, and makes the flow of the music
easy to follow.
Toy Story 2 features one moment of absolute brilliance, and
one moment of kitsch that I could live without. The brilliance is
on Sarah McLachlan’s track “When She Loved Me,” the sad tale of a
once-favorite toy whose owner simply grew up. I challenge you not
to be bawling during this tune – I was within seconds of completely
losing it. (Hey, gimme a break, I cried during
Tarzan, okay?)
But whoever came up with the idea of having Robert Goulet do a
new version of “You’ve Got A Friend In Me” (a song which, sadly, is
begging for retirement) should be sent to score future editions of
All Dogs Go To Heaven – which, as we all know, is hell on
earth. Do we really need to be exposing five-year-olds to kitsch?
Cripes, I remember listening to Goulet when I got my first record
player in 1974, and I’m still dealing with that in therapy.)
While the instrumental score tries to lay out the plot,
sometimes it’s hard to think what a song like “Al’s Toy Barn” has
to do with the story. I guess I’ll have to wait and see the movie –
and, to my friends at Walt Disney, yes, I’ll be seeing it once it’s
out in the theaters.
The instrumental works are short enough to keep the kiddies
interested, but intricate enough to keep the adults culturally
stimulated. The closing version of “You’ve Got A Friend In Me,”
performed by saxophonist Tom Scott, sounds like the perfect closing
credit music – though if there’s a
Toy Story 3, I sincerely hope they let this song be.
Incidentally, composer Randy Newman, who has been a fixture in
Disney film music (or, at least, films from Pixar Animation), takes
a back seat and does not sing on this album – too bad, ’cause I
would have rather heard him sing “You’ve Got A Friend In Me” again
instead of Goulet. Newman concentrates instead on composing and
conducting the instrumental score, as well as co-producing the
album.
The soundtrack for
Toy Story 2 is a solid effort that will please both the
child and your own inner child. Who needs Pokemon when this is all
set to tickle your senses?