Toy Story

Rating: Null/10 (4 June 2009)

Afraid this doesn't really hold up that well. You hear so much about great wit, but that comes only in short fits, a few good lines here and there. I know they're toys, but the characters in "Toy Story" largely suffer from the sort of super-quirk "Juno" and "Little Miss Sunshine" and the lot suffer from. It's basically really quirky toys talking to each other and facing acts of villainy and committing acts of heroism for an hour and a half. The animation is impressive considering when it was made but unlike hand-drawn animation from the old Disney films it HAS dated, and noticeably, often looking like a video game cutscene now. The voice work is fine, but there's just nothing truly interesting about this world or these characters. It's a pleasant enough movie and occasionally very fun, but the overwhelming affection for it seems to me the result of nostalgia and memory rather than any lasting value. Compared to the rip-roaring adventure of "The Incredibles", the spine-tingling melancholy tone and sophisticated ideas of "WALL-E", or the sense of longing and loss and adventure in "Up", "Toy Story" falls short. Very short. In fact, I'd much rather take the small-town nostalgia of "Cars" over this. A good starting point for Pixar but nothing even remotely approaching a classic.