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I recently reviewed the surprisingly good Toy
Story Midway Mania ride and now look at another relatively new Toy Story
project. (Can you tell via all the synergy that Disney plans to release a third
Toy Story movie?) This offering is a musical stage show, only performed on the
Disney Wonder cruise ship. It has only been around for a few months, and it
comes hard on the heels of the well-received "The Golden Mickeys" and last
year's addition, the award-winning "Disney Dreams" show.
Expectations were understandably high on my part, given the recent spate of
successes from the entertainment on the Disney Cruise Line (DCL). But let's not
mince words: the Toy Story Musical is horrible. It fails on almost every
level. It's not good musically, there's no humor or comedy in it, and the
lifeless pacing will tempt even the most forgiving viewers to drink deeply from
the trough of boredom.
Us toys are here so Andy can play with us! I
think.
At least the performances are enthusiastic. I have nothing but huge respect
for these professionals on the DCL. They work long hours, take part in multiple
productions, and pitch in just like everyone else on board. Although now that I
think about it, there is one exception to the praise of the Toy Story
performances. The girl (yes, girl) who plays Sid studied at the William Shatner
school of overacting. Her (over)enthusiasm translated into applause, though,
since some patrons probably looked at her energy as the only redeeming factor in
the play. I found it distracting, though. This same actress also portrayed
Cruella in Golden Mickeys, and she over-acted there, too. I think she was stuck
in Sid mode, actually.
What made the Toy Story movies great? Part of the formula must certainly be
the humor and the jokes. Sadly, this was all but missing in the musical. The
show was, at heart, just a simple retelling of the movie, with no embellishments
to the plot. This is the primary reason the experience just drags, since there
is little newness to it, and the humor is gone.
Watch out! It's new toy Buzz Lightyear! Don't
bother with any humor here or anything.
There are some neat effects. The human children are represented via oversized
shadows on the screen behind, as they thunder through the room, and the show
transitions us from toy-sized to human-sized convincingly in several sequences,
mostly using the large screen behind to zoom in or out.
I appreciate the restraint designers showed in keeping most of the in-theater
effects specific to just one show. It would have been easy to re-use effects
from Golden Mickeys or Disney Dreams, but they didn't do that. The Golden
Mickeys has confetti showers, rope acrobatics, and fuzzy animatronic octopus
legs that reach out of the stage floor. Disney Dreams uses the balconies for
animatronics on one side and live actors on the other side, and it has lasers,
bubbles, and LEDs embedded in the ceiling even in the guest areas.
Mixing movies is OK, provided the staging and
music is well done - as in Disney Dreams.
What makes Golden Mickey successful, though, is not its reliance on
technology and tricks, but its storyline and use of songs. It plays off
nostalgia for Walt Disney, weaving a thin storyline about an awards show around
several familiar songs, mostly drawn from the older Disney movies. Disney Dreams
similarly wraps a storyline about imagination and not growing up around
vignettes from Disney movies (in this case, more recent movies). In both
instances, the songs are already familiar. We know the tunes, we know the
lyrics, and we sing along. But it's not just tired retreads, either, since the
staging and the innovative effects freshen the presentation of the familiar
song. The combination is a kind of fun nostalgia.
It's the claw! You know just how this scene is
going to end, don't you?
But at the Toy Story musical, the songs are new, while it's the story which
is old and familiar. That makes for a dull combination. Disney has tried that
formula before, though, and it worked pretty well. I'm thinking here of the Nemo
musical at Animal Kingdom. Why does it work there but not on the Disney Wonder?
The difference is the quality and the memorable nature of the songs. The
musicality and artistry is simply better at the Nemo show.
Busted, the songs I mean.
At Toy Story, the lack of originality in the story and the absence of jokes
means they must rely on the original songs to inject any interest in the
presentation. There were several songs, whose titles appeared to be:
- To infinity and beyond
- One toy, and it could be me
- We all obey the claw
- I'm the da Vinci of destruction
- Who you callin' busted?
- That's why we're here
The pace of the songs was pretty slow, and it kept the mood subdued rather
than energized.
Buzz and Woody reconcile. I think. I couldn't
care less by this point.
The overall effect of the show was like a high school product, though with
better set design. There is no way I'll waste another two precious hours of my
shipboard time on this show again. |
