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They've done lovesick mermaids. They've done singing lions. They've done dancing teacups. But this time around, Disney has tossed out its crayon boxes and commissioned something startlingly different-looking: the world's first completely computer-animated feature film.
Tom Hanks provides the voice of Woody, a pull-string cowboy doll who rules over a bedroom kingdom of walking, talking toys -- including a wisecracking Mr. Potato Head (Rickles), a demure but streetwise Bo Peep table lamp (Potts), a wimpy dinosaur (Shawn), and a bucket of little green army men. All is hunky-dory until a new toy arrives on the scene -- Buzz Lightyear (Allen), a gadgety space-suited action figure who doesn't realize he's just a hunk of plastic. ''He's a totally self-assured guy with an ego the size of the Andromeda galaxy,'' explains Allen. ''But he's a little delusional. And Hanks has to convince him that he's not what he thinks he is.''
Disney's marketing machine is pitching Toy Story as ''unlike anything you've ever seen before'' -- which is not quite true. Audiences have seen this sort of computer graphic imaging in films like Jurassic Park (which had six minutes of CGI in some of the dino scenes) and Casper (which had more than 40 minutes). But Toy, which took four years for computer-animation company Pixar to complete, will be the first all-CGI movie ever made. ''When we started the whole project in 1991, the number one thing was to create a real character film, a heartwarming tale,'' says ex-Disney animator Lasseter (who now works at Pixar). ''To develop depth, we were looking for really good, funny voice actors. Tom is a really great prop actor. Even when he plays a jerk he's appealing. And Allen has an ability to do macho characters with a soft underbelly.''
Although the actors mostly worked solo in sound booths, they did develop a repartee of sorts. ''Tom and his older boy thought my vomit imitation was pretty humorous,'' says Allen. ''Once I got them laughing so hard [the producers] said, 'We're just going to have to separate these two.''' (Nov. 22)
BUZZ: Clips of the movie hint at a truly groundbreaking piece of animation. Which may be both good news and bad: After this, will old-fashioned Disney cartoons look obsolete?
