Toy Story: My Good, Bad, and Ugly

Rating: 7/10 (29 June 2019)

The Good:
Toy Story set the benchmark not just for the animated films that Pixar would produce in the decades since, but for films from other animation studios like Dreamworks and Disney Animation. Most importantly, this film ushered in an era of animation that is truly fun for the whole family. Rather than filling the time with cute animals, catchy songs, and a story that caters to the lowest, or youngest, common denominator, each of these elements is subtly accentuated and elevated so adults in the audience can appreciate the humor, themes, and well crafted narrative alongside the youth in the audience that are the film's target demographic.
The Bad:
It's very difficult, if not impossible, to find fault with this film. Since it's release, Toy Story has been lauded for every aspect of its production by critics, industry insiders, and audiences at large. But, the years that have past since the film's release have become its biggest drawback. Pixar has released 20 films since Toy Story graced the screens at the time of this writing, including 3 direct sequels to this film. With each new film Pixar has released they've innovated the technology and techniques to define the ever-evolving standard of computer animated films. With each new benchmark in the genre this film has fallen further and further behind looking less and less like the state of the art film that it was in 1995.
The Ugly:
To piggy-back off of my "Bad" for this film, it's hard to find a film that did it better than this, but perhaps we can look to the direct sequel, Toy Story 2 (John Lasseter, Ash Brannon, and Lee Unkrich, 1999). This follow up did everything to one-up it's predecessor. It expanded the world around Woody, Buzz, and company outside of a few simple settings and added an exposition for Woody that accentuates a part of what was good about the first film. Adult viewers at the time of release might have been taken back to their own youths and the corporate studio television shows with toy tie-ins like The Mickey Mouse Club and Howdy Doody. With growth and maturity in the studio's ability to create engrossing stories and improvements in animation in the four years between releases, this film further entrenched the franchise, and solidified Pixar as the premier computer animation studio.