Toy Story (1995)

Ask me twenty years ago and I'd have slapped five stars on this without blinking. Ask me now and I'll give you four and a half, and I want to explain why that half-star difference actually matters less than you might think.

Toy Story didn't just launch one of the greatest animated franchises of all time. It launched an entire era. Before this, computer-generated animation was a novelty, a trick, something you used for a T-1000 or a stampede of wildebeest. Pixar looked at that and said: what if we built a whole world out of it? What if we told a proper story? And they did. The fact that this film had a Mega Drive game tie-in tells you everything about the cultural moment it landed in. This wasn't just a film. It was an event.

Watching it back now, I won't pretend the visuals have aged without a wrinkle. Some of the textures are rough, and the facial animation on the human characters especially feels a long way from what Pixar themselves would go on to achieve. That's not a criticism so much as an observation about how fast the technology moved. The studio basically spent the next decade sprinting away from their own starting line. But here's the thing: it still works. Completely. The story is tight and clever and genuinely funny, and the characters are so well-written that they stopped being fictional a long time ago. Woody, Buzz, Rex, Potato Head. These aren't characters anymore. They're cultural furniture.

I've watched this with my kids more times than I could count, and it never once drags. That's the real test, isn't it? Not whether a film impresses you on first viewing, but whether it holds up when a seven-year-old is asking for it on a Tuesday evening and you've already seen it four times this month. It holds up. Every time. There are jokes layered in for the adults that the kids sail straight past, and action beats that keep younger viewers locked in, and underneath all of it a surprisingly honest message about friendship, change, and what it means to let go of who you thought you were. That's not kids' film territory. That's just good storytelling.

I've reviewed Toy Story 2 separately, and I'd argue that film might actually be the more polished piece of work technically. But there's something about this one, the scrappiness of it, the sheer nerve of what they were attempting, that gives it its own special weight. You can admire a sequel. You can only really be astonished by an original.

The half-star I've docked isn't really about the film failing. It's about me being older and slightly less willing to wave away the moments where the animation creaks, and about acknowledging that if you came to this completely fresh today you might struggle to see past the visuals long enough to feel what the story is doing. That's a genuine barrier for some people, and it's worth being honest about it.

But none of that changes what this film is. A pioneer. A proper classic. Proof that so-called cartoons could carry the same emotional weight as anything playing in the grown-up section of the video shop. Four and a half stars, and honestly, the only thing stopping me rounding up is the fact that I've already seen where Pixar went from here, and the bar they set for themselves is astonishing.

Just don't hand me another Buzz Lightyear toy unless it actually does something.

Rating: ★★★★½  | Year: 1995  | Watched: 2025-05-14

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Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Disney Plus
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: Hulu · Disney Plus
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US

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