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By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
These days, Toy Story is a cultural institution, one that goes back to 1995. That was when the first film premiered and ended up changing the world of animation forever. Pixar’s 3D animation blew the minds of everyone who had grown up watching Disney’s classic, 2D cartoon classics like Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaidand The Lion King. Eventually, Disney read the writing on the wall and bought Pixar, making three-dimensional, CG-animated cartoons the norm. We’ve gotten some real bangers since then (like Frozen), but it came at a cost: the 2D animation style we all grew up with officially became a thing of the past.
When the first Toy Story came out, I was still in middle school, and this movie absolutely blew me away. As an adult, though, it feels bittersweet knowing that this excellent movie more or less killed the kind of animation that defined my entire childhood. That hasn’t kept me from enjoying the film, however, and the wacky misadventures of Woody and Buzz Lightyear always put a grin on my face. Looking to take out a few of your favorite figures and dive into an entire toy box of nostalgia? You don’t have to travel to infinity and beyond. All you have to do is stream Toy Story is Hulu!
He Wants To Be A Cowboy, Baby
The premise of Toy Story is that all toys are alive and secretly pretend to be inanimate objects when humans are around. Young Andy has a collection of awesome toys, including his favorite: Woody, an old-timey sheriff. For his sixth birthday, he gets a cool new sci-fi toy named Buzz Lightyear. However, Buzz doesn’t realize he is a toy and believes his back-of-the-box origin story that he is a Space Ranger on a cosmic mission. Woody and Buzz fight over who and what they are, eventually getting left behind at a gas station. There, these foes must become friends and work together to get back home.
The premise of Toy Story is elegantly simple and creates an instant, cross-generational appeal. Obviously, younger audiences really loved the premise because they loved to imagine that their own toys came to life at night and got up to their own bizarre misadventures. Meanwhile, older audiences loved the sheer nostalgia of the premise, remembering the days when they entertained themselves through the power of pure imagination. Amusingly enough, this movie was basically Disney’s way of snatching this narrative conceit from the horror genre. These toys don’t want to kill you, like Chucky; they just want you to have fun while, behind closed doors, they bicker and cajole like the world’s weirdest found family.
Feeling A Little Buzzed
The simplicity of the premise also leaves room for plenty of world-building. Woody and the rest of his buddies show us how the toys have developed their own kind of secret society, one that flourishes while the humans aren’t watching. We even see how that society is broken up into different cultures, like the goofy aliens at Pizza Planet revering the claw within the claw machine as a kind of godlike being. The character of Buzz Lightyear, meanwhile, answers the natural question of whether all the toys know they are toys or not. Really, every scene advances our understanding of this world without slowing down the story for an awkward lore dump.
Part of why Toy Story feels so breezy is the natural chemistry between some surprisingly great voice actors. The cast choices sometimes include some fun meta jokes, like having Full Metal Jacket’s R. Lee Ermey voice a Sergeant leading some little green army men. Meanwhile, the famously irascible Don Rickles plays Mr. Potato Head, the sarcastic cynic in a group of goofball optimists. Wallace Shawn, meanwhile, uses his trademark weird voice to turn what could have been a terrifying Tyrannosaurus Rex into a comic fraidy cat. Throw in Annie Potts voicing a hilariously seductive Bo Peep, and you have a perfectly eclectic supporting cast for the toys.
Learning To Kiss And Make Up
The real powerhouse performers are our two leads, Tom Hanks and Tim Allen. On paper, these seemed like weird casting choices: neither had much animation experience, and neither had ever worked together before. Nonetheless, each is perfect. Hanks plays Woody as a natural leader whose minor insecurities keep leading to major comic foibles. Meanwhile, Allen plays Buzz as someone confident to a fault, destined to butt heads with Woody. Fortunately, Hanks and Allen have a natural, easygoing chemistry, and their onscreen quarrels feel more like spats between longtime friends than knock-down, drag-out fights between newfound enemies.
Compared to later sequels like Toy Story 3 (which Quentin Tarantino, of all people, dubbed one of the best films of the century), the animation in the first Toy Story is a little stiffer. However, in rewatching the movie, I was taken aback by how well it holds up. It’s still a jaw-dropping film, and the gorgeous animation is (mostly) as impressive now as it was over 30 years ago. I’m still sad that this movie served as the death knell for 2D animation, but seeing how good it looks, I can’t blame audiences and animators alike for seeing this 3D animation as the wave of the future.
There’s not much more to say, really: Toy Story was our first real introduction to Pixar, and it’s just as beautifully brilliant and hilariously weird as you remember. The voice cast does an amazing job bringing colorful characters to life, and the movie does more worldbuilding in its short runtime than Game of Thrones did in an entire season. As an added bonus, this is the rare nostalgic treat that is perfect to share with your own children, and you can now stream it on Hulu. Unless your kid prefers just zoning out on his iPad; in that case, maybe you guys should skip straight to Toy Story 5!
