Toy Story

Released 1995
Animated
Voices Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Jim Varney, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Annie Potts
Directed by John Lasseter

"Toy Story," the first feature film made entirely by computer, creates a universe out of a couple of kids' bedrooms, a gas station and a stretch of suburban highway. Its heroes are toys, which come to life when nobody is watching. Its conflict is between an old-fashioned cowboy doll 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 in macabre combinations. The result is a 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" achieves a three-dimensional reality and freedom of movement that is liberating and new. 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.

Summary by Roger Ebert