Toy Story (1995) review

Toy Story is remembered as a technological milestone, which undersells it. The rendering was impressive for 1995, but the reason the film is still watched is that it has one of the tightest screenplays in the Pixar catalogue — a buddy film with a genuinely well-constructed structure and no wasted scenes.

The Screenplay

The film is an 81-minute buddy movie with a clean three-act structure: Woody is the established favourite, Buzz arrives and displaces him, both are lost and must cooperate to return. Every scene either advances that structure or develops the relationship, and the film has no subplot padding. That economy is unusual for a family film and it is the reason the film holds up so well on repeat viewing.

The emotional core is jealousy, which is a genuinely uncomfortable subject for a children's film. Woody's fear of being replaced is not presented as villainy and not presented as justified; it is presented as understandable and destructive, and the film lets him make a real mistake with real consequences. The scene where he knocks Buzz out of the window is genuinely upsetting because the film has earned the audience's investment in both characters.

Read more about animation cinema in our Animation genre hub, explore the work of John Lasseter in our directors section, or see where this film lands in best films of the 1990s.

Technology and Design

The film was the first fully computer-animated feature, and the technical constraints shaped its design in ways that turned out to be advantages. Human characters were difficult to render convincingly, so the film focuses on toys — which are allowed to look synthetic — and humans appear only from the knees down or in soft focus. The plastic surfaces, the reflective helmets, and the fabric textures were chosen partly because the technology handled them well.

Randy Newman's songs are the film's other defining element, and 'You've Got a Friend in Me' is one of the great original film songs. The score is used to establish the film's nostalgic register, which is a deliberate choice for a story about a toy that will eventually be outgrown. The film's final sequence, with Andy's toys listening to the new puppy arrive, sets up the trilogy's real subject: obsolescence.

Voice Cast and Character

Tom Hanks and Tim Allen are perfectly matched, and the film's comedy depends on the contrast between Woody's anxious competence and Buzz's serene delusion. Allen's Buzz is a genuinely funny creation — a toy who does not know he is a toy — and the performance never condescends to him. Hanks gives Woody a warmth that survives his worst behaviour, which is necessary for the film to work.

The supporting cast is unusually strong for a debut feature. Don Rickles' Mr. Potato Head, Jim Varney's Slinky Dog, Wallace Shawn's Rex, and John Ratzenberger's Hamm all get distinct personalities and running jokes, and the film establishes a template that Pixar would follow for the next three decades. The ensemble is the reason the film feels like a world rather than a premise.

Legacy and Limitations

The film's influence is difficult to overstate. It established Pixar as a studio, proved that computer animation could carry a feature, and created the template for a generation of animated films built around high-concept premises and adult-accessible writing. Its success also triggered the decline of traditional hand-drawn animation at the major studios, which is a complicated legacy.

The film's limitations are mostly technical and visible in retrospect. Some of the human character models, particularly Sid, look rudimentary by modern standards, and the film's palette is flatter than later Pixar work. These are artefacts of 1995 rather than flaws in design, and they do not affect the film's writing, which remains exceptional. A genuine landmark that is also genuinely good.

Themes and ideas

• Jealousy and insecurity
• Obsolescence
• Cooperation
• What it means to be loved