Toy Story 2 is not a sequel. It is an upgrade. It is a manufacturer's improvement - of staggering ingenuity. It is a software refinement. It is a species leap, a higher order of being.
This film combines a witty and charming children's fantasy in a tradition going back to the Grimm brothers and Hans Christian Andersen, with computer animation above and beyond "state-of-the-art". Its bright, hyperreal light, its sleek, impossibly clean planes, its laser-sharp pixellation and its extra-terrestrial landscaping will take you, in the stirring words of Buzz Lightyear himself, to infinity - and beyond! The sheer technical magnificence of Toy Story 2, harnessed by a sweetly, seductively human script, rolls over you like a tank.
It reveals with pitiless clarity the inferiority of what has gone before. The dull storylining of The Phantom Menace, the berk characterisation in Jurassic Park - movies to which Toy Story 2 playfully and generously alludes - together with their clunking, Stephenson's Rocket "effects", are shown up, very badly. And as for Babe, with meaningless moving mouths imposed on impassive animals, or Bob Hoskins trying to focus on toons in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?_ they are prehistoric.
After Toy Story 2 - the brilliant invention of director John Lasseter and Pixar Animation studios - watching its predecessors is like trying to use a 60s washing machine. In fact, it is tempting to say that it makes reality itself look a bit shopworn and obsolete, were it not for the fact that the film addresses its own built-in technical and cultural obsolescence with such daring.
Buzz Lightyear is back, supremely virile and questing, voiced by Tim Allen, a Master of the Universe rattling around in the playroom, among a rag-tag army of toys owned by a kid called Andy. His comrades have need of Buzz's toybox heroism when his cowboy buddy Woody - perhaps the most perfect casting of Tom Hanks's career - is kidnapped by a hideous toy magnate, the proprietor of Al's Toy Barn, itself a sinister corporate variant of Toys R Us. This is because Woody turns out to be supremely collectible, the hero of a long-forgotten 1950s TV serial, and part of its spin-off merchandise, and he is reunited with his TV "family": Jessie (Joan Cusack), Bullseye the Horse and Stinky Pete the Prospector (Kelsey Grammer).
They tell him to forget his owner and his old friends, and come with them to live a pampered life behind glass in a museum, because kids are by nature cruel and fickle, moral illiterates who cannot return the passionate love unquestioningly lavished on them by toys. Andy, his beloved owner will one day casually discard him: "Didja think he'd take you with him to college? Or on his honeymoon?"
Thus, Toy Story 2 conjures a brilliant dilemma out of nowhere, making the toys' dependent relationship with children a disturbing analogy to children's fearful relationship with adults. It enacts the child's deepest fear of abandonment, weakness and vulnerability. And it is at this crux that the picture unveils its showstopping moment: the heartrending song from Jessie the Cowgirl, written by Randy Newman - When She Loved Me - telling of how Jessie was thrown aside by her owner, Emily. This is a tear-jerker to be classed with the imprisonment of Dumbo's mom.
This cosmic juxtaposition of adult and child, of large and small, is replicated in our vision of the toys themselves: in close-up (to use a metaphor drawn from old-fashioned spatial reality) they are big, substantial heroes, battling resourcefully with complex and considerable foes. But seen from adult height, scampering along the sidewalk, almost crushed by shoes and tyres, they are absurdly little - especially macho Buzz. The effect is very funny and the script the toys are given by screenwriters Doug Chamberlain and Chris Webb, is wonderfully sharp and rich in gags.
It is customary to complain that movies of this sort are simply feature-length ads for the merchandise. That is still true, but Toy Story 2 audaciously pre-empts and goes beyond this complaint. There is a scene in the toy warehouse where Buzz wanders into a whole aisle full of Buzz Lightyears, ready for sale - because, explains the Barbie tour-guide, short-sighted merchandisers failed to anticipate demand the first time around back in 1995! And the picture has already covertly established the cultural substance and value of toys with the enchanting Woody memorabilia of the 50s.
In a sense, Toy Story 2 attempts to collapse not merely the distinction between reality and animation, but between enjoying the product in the cinema and enjoying it in the toyshop: conflating it into one happy retail experience. But it simultaneously embraces the temporariness and disposability of the experience, as part and parcel of growing up.
For some, that might be all too slick, convenient, and machine-tooled. But it is an awe-inspiring display of special effects, and its characterisation, particularly that of the all-American hero Buzz, is very funny. As well as being a landmark of sorts in commercial cinema, Toy Story 2 really is that mythical beast: an extremely enjoyable picture for all ages, and far superior to anything George Lucas has given us lately.
