Having fallen from the glory years of “WALL-E” and “Up,” Pixar is taking a stab at television. In the spirit of Halloween, it released its first TV special, “Toy Story of Terror,” on ABC on Wednesday. While some critics have not been able to get on board with Pixar’s recent obsession with sequels, there’s no doubt that the studio has a flair for taking old characters and stories and expanding them in new ways.
Since Andy graciously handed his toys down to his little neighbor Bonnie in “Toy Story 3,” we’ve seen them in a few short films that played before “Cars 2,” “The Muppets” and the 3D re-release of “Finding Nemo.” But “Toy Story of Terror” gives us a full half hour with the beloved characters, and we find them on a road trip with Bonnie and her mother. When the car’s tire goes flat and Jessie is thrown and almost trapped in one of the suitcases, we’re set up for a spooky story. The flat tire lands them in a motel for the night, where Buzz makes the mistake of leaving the closet to check out the “amenities.” As always, good ol’ Woody insists that the toys stick together, and they all follow.
It’s Jessie who is given the part of protagonist in the story. When the toys start to disappear one by one, Jessie is the last one standing. She meets Combat Carl, who, speaking in the third person, warns her that she must turn back or she will never find her owner again. Next thing she knows, she is taken into the mouth of an iguana (which next to her looks about the size of a large dinosaur). It turns out that the iguana belongs to the motel manager with sinister plans. Now they must find a way to escape, and in typical Pixar fashion, obstacle after obstacle convinces us it isn’t possible. Tune in to find out if the crew can escape or if this is its final screen appearance after all.
While television is a new venue for Pixar, feature films are often rebooted as shorts. Usually between five and 10 minutes long, the shorts possess as much genius as the feature films. Pixar can fit its formula into any time frame, and it does so in “Toy Story of Terror.” There is no major change to the characters’ situations from beginning to end, as we would expect from a feature film, but the special tells a good story and gets Pixar in on some Halloween fun.