A timid little penguin bounds into the scene, squeaking with every bounce. Woody the cowboy doll asks him how he's doing and Wheezy replies, "I feel swell. In fact, I think I feel a song coming on!" A big-band, Vegas-inspired rendition of "You've Got a Friend in Me" begins to play while Wheezy sings—with the voice of Robert Goulet, no less.

Although Randy Newman's song is key to the original Toy Story, its role in Toy Story 2 is even more powerful in communicating a message of friendship—a foundational virtue in Pixar films and in ethics.

"You've Got a Friend in Me" served to establish the friendship between Woody and his owner, Andy, and later underscored the friendship between Buzz Lightyear and Woody. The song also highlights the friendship between the toys and reminds Woody of his friendship with Andy.

As Buzz and the other toys leave Woody behind, Woody watches a scene from Woody's Roundup featuring an acoustic guitar version of "You've Got a Friend in Me," performed by a Woody puppet. "The real treasures are your friends and family," says the puppet. As Woody watches the song being performed, he rubs paint off the bottom of his boot, revealing the word "ANDY" (complete with a backwards N) and is reminded of his friendship with Andy, as well as his identity and purpose as a toy. His change of heart is immediate, and he decides to return to Andy. Friendship is more important than standing behind glass in a toy museum.

Our Friendship Will Never Die

On some level, we all understand what friendship means, but on another level, a successful definition eludes us. Is friendship a virtue? Ideally, it should be, but like so many other virtues, friendship is often fleeting, superficial and even twisted into forms that are less than virtuous.

We live in a world of online social networking where we instantly can become someone's "friend" (see chapter 11) and where degrees of friendship abound. Despite the haziness of the definition, however, there's no doubt that much of the happiness we experience in life is due to friendship.

So, what is friendship? It is valued, sought after, enjoyed and maintained, sometimes over the course of a lifetime. When we know we have made a friend, on some level we experience joy. Deep and meaningful relationships all require friendship. Sometimes these relationships bring opposites together merely through the fact that the opposites share a common joy.

Friendship is a recurring theme in Pixar films. In WALL-E, a garbage-compacting robot is friends with an indestructible cockroach. In Ratatouille, a rat is a friend to a human. In Up, a disillusioned old man learns to be a friend to an eager boy.

Pixar revels in portraying unexpected friendships. Perhaps this is merely a storytelling method to make films more interesting, but maybe there is more to it. Do we tend to seek and maintain only the sorts of friendships that seem comfortable and expected, rather than those that might make us uncomfortable and are unexpected?