Toy Story

Toy Story

Toy Story
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DVD details

Actor: Annie Potts, Don Rickles, John Ratzenberger, Tim Allen, Tom Hanks
Brand: Disney
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Animated, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.77:1
Running Time: 80 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2010-05-11
Audience Rating: G (General Audience)
Model: 10323300
Studio: Disney*Pixar
Product features:
  • a fun story

DVD Reviews of Toy Story

DVD Review: "Toy Story" creates a universe out of a couple of kid's bedrooms, a gas station, and a stretch of suburban highway
Summary: 5 Stars

Its heroes are toys, which come to life when nobody is watching. Its conflict is between an old-fashioned cowboy who has always been a little boy's favorite toy, and the new space ranger who may replace him. The villain is the mean kid next door who takes toys apart and puts them back together again in macabre combinations. And the result is an visionary roller-coaster ride of a movie.

For the kids in the audience, a movie like this will work because it tells a fun story, contains a lot of humor, and is exciting to watch. Older viewers may be even more absorbed, because "Toy Story," the first feature made entirely by computer, achieves a three-dimensional reality and freedom of movement that is liberating and new. The more you know about how the movie was made, the more you respect it.

Imagine the spectacular animation of the ballroom sequence in "Beauty and the Beast" at feature length and you'll get the idea. The movie doesn't simply animate characters in front of painted backdrops; it fully animates the characters and the space they occupy, and allows its point of view to move freely around them. Computer animation has grown so skillful that sometimes you don't even notice it (the launching in "Apollo 13" took place largely within a computer). Here, you do notice it, because you're careening through space with a new sense of freedom.

Consider for example a scene where Buzz Lightyear, the new space toy, jumps off a bed, bounces off a ball, careens off of the ceiling, spins around on a hanging toy helicopter and zooms into a series of loop-the-loops on a model car race track. Watch Buzz, the background, and the perspective -- which stretches and contracts to manipulate the sense of speed. It's an amazing ride.

I learn from the current Wired magazine that the movie occupied the attention of a bank of 300 powerful Sun microprocessors, the fastest models around, which took about 800,000 hours of computing time to achieve this and other scenes -- at 2 to 15 hours per frame. Each frame required as much as 300 MBs of information, which means that on my one-gigabyte hard disk, I have room for about three frames, or an eighth of a second. Of course computers are as dumb as a box of bricks if they're not well-programmed, and director John Lasseter, a pioneer in computer animation, has used offbeat imagination and high energy to program his.

But enough of this propeller-head stuff. Let's talk about the movie. Lasseter and his team open the film in a kid's bedroom, where the toys come to life when their owner is absent. Undisputed king of the toys is Woody, a cowboy with a voice by Tom Hanks. His friends include Mr. Potato Head (Don Rickles), Slinky Dog (Jim Varney), Hamm the Pig (John Ratzenberger) and Bo Peep (Annie Potts). The playroom ingeniously features famous toys from real life toys (which may be product placement, but who cares), including a spelling slate that does a running commentary on key developments (when Mr. Potato Head finally achieves his dream of Mrs. Potato Head, the message is "Hubba! Hubba!).

One day there's a big shakeup in this little world. The toy owner, named Andy, has a birthday. Woody dispatches all of the troops in a Bucket of Soldiers to spy on developments downstairs, and they use a Playskool walkie-talkie to broadcast developments. The most alarming: The arrival on the scene of Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), a space ranger.

Buzz is the most endearing toy in the movie, because he's not in on the joke. He thinks he's a real space ranger, temporarily marooned during a crucial mission, and he goes desperately to work trying to repair his space ship -- the cardboard box he came in. There's real poignancy later in the film when he sees a TV commercial for himself, and realizes he's only a toy.

The plot heats up when the human family decides to move, and Woody and Buzz find themselves marooned in a gas station with no idea how to get home. (It puts a whole new spin on the situation when a toy itself says, "I'm a lost toy!") And later there's a terrifying interlude in the bedroom of Sid, the dreadful boy next door, who takes his toys apart and reassembles them like creatures from a nightmare. (His long suffering sister is forced to hold a tea party for headless dolls.)

Seeing "Toy Story," I felt some of the same exhilaration I felt during "Who Framed Roger Rabbit." Both movies take apart the universe of cinematic visuals, and put it back together again, allowing us to see in a new way. "Toy Story" is not as inventive in its plotting or as clever in its wit as "Rabbit" or such Disney animated films as "Beauty and the Beast"; it's pretty much a buddy movie transplanted to new terrain. Its best pleasures are for the eyes. But what pleasures they are! Watching the film, I felt I was in at the dawn of a new era of movie animation, which draws on the best of cartoons and reality, creating a world somewhere in between, where space not only bends but snaps, crackles and pops.
More Toy Story reviews:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Description of Toy Story

In this 3D computer animated feature, a pull-string cowboy doll is the leader of the toys until the latest, greatest action figure enters the picture. When the toy rivals are separated from thei rowner, they ultimately learn to put aside their differences and work as a team to get back home to the boy they love.

There is greatness in film that can be discussed, dissected, and talked about late into the night. Then there is genius that is right in front of our faces--we smile at the spell it puts us into and are refreshed, and nary a word needs to be spoken. This kind of entertainment is what they used to call "movie magic," and there is loads of it in this irresistible computer animation feature. Just a picture of these bright toys reawaken the kid in us. Filmmaker John Lasseter thinks of himself as a storyteller first and an animator second, much like another film innovator, Walt Disney.

Lasseter's story is universal and magical: what do toys do when they're not played with? Cowboy Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks), Andy's favorite bedroom toy, tries to calm the other toys (some original, some classic) during a wrenching time of year--the birthday party, when newer toys may replace them. Sure enough, Space Ranger Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) is the new toy that takes over the throne. Buzz has a crucial flaw, though--he believes he's the real Buzz Lightyear, not a toy. Lasseter further scores with perfect voice casting, including Don Rickles as Mr. Potato Head and Wallace Shawn as a meek dinosaur. The director-animator won a special Oscar for "the development and inspired application of techniques that have made possible the first feature-length computer-animated film." In other words, the movie is great. --Doug Thomas
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