One of the Top Ten Movies of the 1990s

Rating: Null/10 (1 February 1999)

If there's any justice in this crazy world of ours, "Toy Story" will become a classic in the mode of "The Wizard of Oz" and "Snow White." I look forward to its appearing every year on television, as a much anticipated "event."
It certainly is groundbreaking, what with imagery that must've taken a computer system dwarfing the pentagon's to do.
But I love how well-thought-out this movie is. The plot works from beginning to end. The performances are terrific--Tom Hanks and Tim Allen don't just blather their lines onto the soundtrack, leaving it for the animators to do all the work. No, rather, they're really *acting* here, imbuing their characters with as much depth and breadth as if they'd been playing flesh-and-blood people.
Keep a sharp eye, movie lovers, inside gags abound: When Woody runs from an escaped globe, you'll think it looks just like the giant ball sequence from "Raiders," and you'll be right! When Buzz walks amid a sea of tiny alien squeak-toys, Richard Dreyfuss' close encounter "...of the Third Kind," of course, should echo in your mind.
The look of the movie *is* stunning--and, IMO, it "works" in every instance but one: Syd's dog. Instead of looking canine, he looks instead like a fur-covered football.
I wish Pixar had spent a few more pixels refining his "look."
But all that's quibbling. Here's a movie for every kid who whiled away an afternoon while sprawled in front of a toy box and for every adult who ever wondered what happens to those Little Tykes people once you turn off the lights and go to bed...