Pixar Pint #1: Toy Story

A new series: pint-sized reviews of every Pixar movie in release order

Hey howdy hey! Eli here. Remember this IGN tweet from last month in which their staff collectively ranked all 25 Pixar movies? It got ratioed pretty badly and garnered a decent amount of controversy! I can’t say it wasn’t warranted, but what struck me the most about it was that, despite almost everyone seemingly agreeing the order was wrong, not everyone could agree on exactly how it was wrong. The “correct” order is entirely subjective; it all depends on what you’re looking for in a good animated film and, of course, how nostalgic you are for each one.

My partner Leah and I kept trying to figure out how we would each rank the Pixar movies, but we both came to the conclusion that any such ranking would be incomplete because a) we haven’t seen a lot of these movies in years, and b) we haven’t seen some of these movies at all. So we did what any rational couple would do: we started watching through all 25 Pixar films in release order. We wanted to go into this as objectively as possible, so we decided beforehand on certain elements of every film to analyze:

Aesthetic: How good does the film look overall? Does the design stand out and/or make sense?

Animation: How well is the film animated? Does it do anything notably well or badly?

Story: Is the film’s story well conceived, well written, and well executed? Is it fun to follow and/or does it leave a lasting moral impression?

Characters: Separate from the plot, are the film’s characters well conceived, well written, and well executed? Do they avoid falling into stereotypes?

Acting: How well is the film voice acted? Are there any notably good or bad performances?

Music: How well does the film’s music add to the experience? After all, what’s a good Pixar film without an iconic score?

We originally started doing this on Discord, where each message is limited to 4,000 characters (if you have Nitro; 2,000 if you don’t), so I aimed to fit every review into one message, and she followed suit. And as we began doing this, more of our friends here at The Low Major (David, Maddy, and Nik) wanted in; we’re all in our 20s, so we grew up with the golden age of Pixar films and each feel strongly about most of the films in the firm’s heyday. We eventually decided, “hey, these would be fun to publish,” so Pixar Pints was born!

We have no firm schedule for these releases, but we do hope to get through these within the summer. One more thing before we get going: we’re not going to review the shorts that were packaged with each film as part of the movie itself, mostly because they aren’t actually part of the movie and a lot of people’s memories of each film do not include the shorts, but also because, especially in the early days, the shorts were not necessarily produced for the films and in some cases predate the films by several years. Perhaps we will look at all of the shorts once we get through the films themselves.

Without further ado, here are each of our takes on the film that started an empire: Toy Story!

Toy Story quick facts

Release date: November 22, 1995 | Director: John Lasseter | Music: Randy Newman

Starring: Tom Hanks (Woody), Tim Allen (Buzz), Don Rickles (Mr. Potato Head), Jim Varney (Slinky), Wallace Shawn (Rex), John Ratzenberger (Hamm), Annie Potts (Bo Peep), John Morris (Andy), Erik von Detten (Sid)

Budget: $30 million | Box office: $373 million

Eli

Aesthetic: 7/10 | Pixar played to their strengths here, which were much fewer in number then than they are now. All of the toy models look really good, which they should given they're the focus of the movie, but all of the non-toy models (humans, dog) look like shit, sometimes to the point that I thought they just looked like giant toys. Some of the visual decisions are nonsensical. Why is there a bright starry night in the middle of a bustling city? Why does Andy change his entire room's décor less than a week before the family moves to a different house? Both of these are to provide some visual assistance in telling the story, but they just distracted me more than they helped. Otherwise, it's just as good as I remember it.

Animation: 8/10 | Honestly pretty good even by modern standards, if a bit choppy at times. Again, the non-toy characters are neglected and it looks at times like their bodies just warp for no discernable reason. It was 1995.

Story: 7/10 | It hits harder as an adult than it did as a kid. The two main characters both go through separate existential crises brought about from distinct falls from grace/delusions of grandeur, which is...relatable in a way that isn't possible when you're five years old, but I feel like it could have been more detailed. In 1995, feature films were shorter and animated films in particular had numerous technical limitations that kept them short. In 2022, this movie would probably be at least a half hour longer to flesh more things out. Woody breaking through to Buzz right as he's about to die by rocket particularly felt a little contrived. All in all, I was expecting this score to be lower than I ended up putting it, but there are clearly better Pixar stories.

Characters: 8/10 | Woody is a much bigger jerk in the first half of the movie than I remembered, going as far as to wish Buzz dead straight to his face. I remembered Woody as a much more likeable character because my fondest memories of this franchise are from Toy Story 2, but it just isn't the case in the original film; he's a lot more dynamic. Buzz isn't really dynamic as much as he just flips a switch halfway through the movie and becomes a completely different character; I think this would have been fleshed out a little more if this movie was made today. I didn't remember Mr. Potato Head being as prominent as he is; his jealousy of Woody is well written. My primary gripes are twofold: 1) the non-toy characters are used more as plot devices than actual characters, which might have been due to technical limitations, and 2) there aren't any fleshed out female characters (not only does this movie not pass the Bechdel test, but I'm also not sure two women ever talk to each other at any time); Bo Peep is this weird damsel/trophy wife in a way that I completely missed as a kid. I feel like one of the primary plot points is Woody and Buzz indirectly fighting for her, but the movie doesn't make it clear why she matters aside from "she is woman". I think this would have been done differently in 2022.

Acting: 10/10 | No notes.

Music: 8/10 | There's a certain floor you can't dip below when "You've Got a Friend in Me" is your centerpiece. I found that I remembered almost every note of "Strange Things", too, despite not hearing it in years. The background scoring blends in seamlessly to the film. It does its job.

Final score: 8/10 | The numbers in my final scores are going to be used as quasi-tiers given I'm not giving anything a decimal grade. I went back and forth over whether I thought this was a good 7 or a bad 8 and decided on the latter because, at the end of the movie, I still found myself wanting more rather than painstakingly waiting for the credits to roll.

Leah

Aesthetic: 6/10 | Toy Story's aesthetic does look dated. I'll give them credit for centering the movie around toys, whose plastic-y designs end up looking okay in 2022. That was a brilliant choice, working within the limitations of the time. However, the people and the dog are not the best looking.

Animation: 8/10 | This movie is hugely important to the medium of animation as the first feature length CG film. Toy Story pioneered the way for feature film animation today (for better or worse). I thought the animation still held up pretty well. Obviously it's gotten a lot more sophisticated over the last 27-ish years, but that doesn't make Toy Story's animation bad. And I have to give it credit for being ambitious and literally pushing an entire medium forward.

Story: 7/10 | Solid story, I thought it was fun seeing how Woody and Buzz got back to Andy. It was fun to experience, though I did think parts of it were cliché, and at certain points it was hard to suspend my disbelief.

Characters: 8/10 | Buzz Lightyear is hilarious; he made the movie super fun. Woody goes through a solid character arc; he works as a protagonist. The supporting cast of toys is pretty fun too. This movie definitely fails the Bechdel test though. There's one girl toy, who exists to be a love interest, and the human women/girls barely do anything.

Acting: 10/10 | "You are a sad, strange little man. And you have my pity."

Music: 7/10 | I thought it was fine. The score didn't necessarily stand out to me, and I thought the songs used were okay. (Sorry Eli!)

Final score: 8/10 | Super important movie in the history of animation, and as an animation nerd I've got to give it the respect it's due. It's still fun to watch decades later, so I think it holds up. It wasn't perfect, but there's a lot to appreciate.

Maddy

Aesthetic: 8/10 | I am a sucker for early CGI so this movie is very nice to me. Obviously, going with toys (aka plastic) was the best choice and has helped this movie age quite nicely (if you ignore the humans).

Animation: 8/10 | For these reviews, I will be discussing the animation within the context of when the movie came out, and for 1995 and being the first CGI feature, its a real crowning achievement of technology that’s still a bit rough around the edges.

Story: 6.5/10 | I am not super high on the story in this but it’s not bad. It helps the movie be sorta comfort food for me.

Characters: 8/10 | Woody is a bigger asshole than I remember, and I’ve watched the Black Friday cut of this film. Buzz has the much better arc of the two throughout this movie and is more enjoyable. The supporting cast is tons of fun. The humans barely exist and Sid is a C-tier villain.

Acting: 10/10 | How do you explain Tim Allen?

Music: 9/10 | STRANNNNNGEEEE THINGGGGS ARE HAPPENING TO ME (thank you Randy Newman).

Final score: 7/10 | A great start for the studio and, as I noted earlier, a really great comfort food movie. If I was going off childhood memories and such, this is a 10/10. I miss my VHS tape of this movie.

Fun Maddy note: Sid is traumatized by the end of the movie!

David

When I was a kid, this was The Movie for the longest time. We'd rush to grab the well-worn VHS tape, prying it open and sliding the bulky tape into our beloved VCR player, settling in for a couple hours of good fun.

HOWEVER

As someone who would routinely sob when I would have to donate or throw out toys, I am directly blaming this movie and asking for compensation for emotional damage because what I did not need was a solid reason to believe that all my toys had feelings.

No, I'm not thinking about a specific Matchbox car and no, those aren't tear tracks. Fuck you. Back off!

For real, though.

Aesthetic: For 1995, it's pretty impressive. Though the people are lacking, choosing plastic toys was an ingenious way to account for some of the lacking technology at the time.

Animation: Again - pretty good! Lacking at points, but for 1995? Hell yeah.

Story: I mean, it gave me lasting trauma regarding my relationship with objects, but it's also funny and heartwarming and comforting - a net win, I think.

Characters: Woody and Buzz are phenomenal as a lead duo, and though the rest of the cast lacks a little depth, together, it's a solid roster that would at least go one round in the playoffs. Ham remains a sleeper favorite of mine.

Acting: See above. Tom Hanks and Tim Allen fucking KILLED it, man. Iconic in their roles.

Music: Randy Newman is a god. Strange Things is - even now - a personal favorite "movie song".

Final score: It gets an 8/10. This is on a prorated scale, in a sense - would modern-day me without any memories of childhood rate it the same? Probably not. It's dated, it's technologically a prototype to so much of modern animation - but in that sense it's wonderful, too. Though I may not be enamored the same way I was, I loved this movie and it'll always have a pretty positive association.

Nik

The character designer for a lot of the early Pixar movies was a man named Bud Luckey. You may recognize his voice as Chuckles the Clown in Toy Story 3 and Rick Dicker in The Incredibles. Bud passed away a few years ago but my dad and stepmom are friends with his son, who has carried on in his dad’s footsteps. Oh, and by the way, Bud’s son's name is Andy. While it’s no secret the speculation that this is how the character got his name, I was able to ask him myself a couple years ago, actually at the encouragement of my parents on the way to the gathering he would be at. What I learned was nothing, except for the fact that he really enjoys neither confirming or denying to anyone who asks.

Aesthetic: Overall, the aesthetic of this movie is immersive. There is something really charming about seeing the world from a toy's view. All the settings were thought out as well. While there is a slight lack of detail we see in the Pixar films of today, it is far from bland.

Animation: I think that the animation is definitely a bit touchy, but obviously incredible for the time. This can be seen mostly in the human characters, all of which have a bit of an off movement. The magic of having the main characters be toys is that they can afford to move clumsily, since there’s no reference point.

Story: I mean it’s in the name, right? It is the perfect blend of emotion, adventure, and laughter. This is what every good story needs. The mixture is hard to get right. Although I will say as a kid, after watching this movie you are hesitant to get rid of any toys at all.

Characters: As much as the franchise has always been represented by Buzz and Woody, I think it is safe to say the future movies are a lot more Woody centric. This movie holds a lot of Buzz’s character development throughout the franchise, and I wish they expanded on it more. The back and forth the two give each other is what can only be described as the best friendship ever brought together on the animated screen.

Acting: We were truly blessed to have a voice cast that was so iconic. I don’t think there will ever be a duo more known for their voice work on a certain project as Allen and Hanks are. The supporting cast of Rickles, Varney, Shawn, and Ratzenberger add so much character, each with a unique voice.

Music: I am not a huge music guy, but “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” is one of those special songs that is always in my head somehow. It will start playing at random times, and I think part of this is just the wholesomeness.

Final score: 9/10 | The only reason this movie is not a 10/10 is that the age of it does show at times in the overall animation. Everything else about it is perfect.

Final notes

Thanks for joining us on this journey! This is where we’re each gonna put our overall rankings, which obviously right now include just the one film, but will grow as we watch more.

Next up: A Bug’s Life