Review of Toy Story (1995) by Harry210 — 22 Mar 2011

1995 saw the release of the first computer generated animated feature length film and this movie introduced a whole new way of telling a story. Toy Story marks the first hit movie made by Pixar Animation Studios, who in the early days, prior to the production of this movie, made 4 very fascinating computer generated short films.

Toy Story is Pixar"s big leap to the big screen and boy does this movie not disappoint. This movie has an interesting plot and shows what toys would be like when the humans leave them on their own.

The movie definitely gets going towards the middle of the movie. This movie has a superb cast of characters and all are perfectly voiced. The presentation, it"s outstanding even by today"s standards.

Andy"s toys are running scared because of Andy"s birthday (he pushes his birthday party forward by one week because he"s moving house) is coming up as they are worried that some of them may be replaced by better toys or be outclassed.

Woody, a cowboy doll (voiced brilliantly by Tom Hanks) is the leader of the group of Andy"s toys. He"s the dominant toy and Andy"s favourite toy. However, his position is threatened with the arrival of Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Tim Allen): A space ranger toy which strangely thinks that he is a real space ranger.

His catchphrase "To infinity and beyond" is so memorable and even gets a neat little mention in Pixar"s next film, A Bugs Life. Buzz thinking that he"s a real space ranger makes me laugh: I mean, he tries to fix his "ship" which he "crash landed" onto Andy, proves that he can fly by using his plastic wings to fly around Andy"s room which Andy"s toys become mesmerised by the display.

Hell, he even wants to teach a nasty kid, named Sid who lives next door to Andy"s, a lesson by melting him with his "scary laser". He basically refuses to accept he is a toy until he tries to fly out of a window later on in the movie.

Andy"s toys seem delusional and excited over the arrival of Buzz as they find all of the neat stuff that he can do. Woody's jealously gets the better of him as he doesn't want to become second favourite to Andy so he devises a cunning plan to get rid of Buzz.

After he accidently knocks him out of the window of Andy's room, Andy's toys are angry at Woody and before they can punish him, Andy and his mother take Woody to Pizza Planet. Buzz and Woody have a brawl at a petrol station and then find themselves at Pizza Planet.

They then find themselves in the clutches of the toy bully, Sid which picked them both up at a grabbing toy alien game (or something like that). Now unlike the other 2 Toy Story movies that have an antagonist which is an evil toy, this movie doesn't have that but Sid sorta fits into the evil antagonist category.

As Rex would say, Sid "tortures toys, just for fun!" Sid has toys which look horrifying (sort of) and most of them are toys which have been merged with other toys like the toy with the muscular body with a ducks head or the toy that has a toy babies head implanted onto a spider meccano body.

As the two try to find a way out of Sid's horrible room, Buzz finally finds out that he is a toy and together with Woody, they make it out of Sid's house (even going far as breaking a few rules). Woody grows to accept Buzz into Andy's toy colony over the course of the movie and like a real cowboy, he becomes the hero of the movie.

There are a few sad moments in this movie where Woody is trapped under a milk crate and admits that he doesn't hold a candle to a toy like Buzz and tells Buzz to leave him behind because he thinks Andy would rather play with a toy (which thankfully doesn't happen).

When Andy is sad over losing Woody and Buzz, children can definitely relate to that and shows how much he misses his 2 favourite toys. This sets the scene for an exhilarating climax which sees Woody and Buzz trying to catch up with the now departing moving van and their owner Andy which sees Andy's RC car go as fast as the Earth's rotation.

The two toys finally make it back and everything is back to normal. The original music composed by Randy Newman is really good and one piece of music that he wrote and sung titled "You've got a friend in me" suits the movie well and is also used in Toy Story's 2 sequels.

Pixar have made a film about plastic toys and made the concept an entertaining movie to watch. In this movie, the toys are being portrayed as adults and their job is to look after Andy and be there for him.

Toy Story isn't too serious and scary to be watched by kids even though it is rated PG by the BBFC; there is some humour in the movie like the fact that Buzz believes that he is a space ranger, Buzz acting all crazy in the "I am Mrs Nesbitt!" scene and the fact that Mr Potato head keeps losing his body parts.

It maybe a computer generated animated movie but it's definitely aimed at people of all ages. I will always love Toy Story and animated films in general regardless of my age.