Pixar: Toy Story

• 2nd Feb 2011

Watching Toy Story as an adult (well, almost…) certainly evoked an odd mixture of feelings compared to when I was a wee kiddywink. Of course, I was thoroughly entertained, moved, nostalgic but, and it really does shame me to admit it, I was also annoyingly unimpressed. Not with the characters by any means; they made me laugh and cry (well, almost…) and everything in between as much in their first outing as they did in their second and third and in any case, ten years down the line these familiar friends spoke to me as if they were an old photo album full of Polaroids.

But, similarly to said knackered photo album, the quality of the picture just isn’t the Samsung DX50AJQ#L digital multi-lens pocket camera that we’ve all become used to nowadays. It’s Polaroid. And Toy Story just isn’t cutting edge, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it detail, so-smooth-it-could-be-real animation; not by today’s standards anyway. It may seem a bit of a thick thing to say, given the main characters of the film, but everything looked a bit too plastic.

Now, it’s one thing for Woody, Buzz and the gang to look plastic because they are just that. But when Andy and Sid appear they resemble Action Men more than real life little boys and the problem doesn’t stop with the look of the characters: the main place you’ll notice it is with their movement. Rather than being flowing and lifelike, the lines are jilted and just a little bit unnatural and the facial expressions of the characters, whilst discernable are noticeably subtler than with later films and it really does have an impact on the storytelling of the film.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to write Toy Story off as unwatchable and in 2011 it has to be viewed with a strong pinch of appreciation for the fact that in 1995 when the film was released, 1500kbps [no, I did not just Google ‘Internet Speed 1995’] was seen as groundbreaking technology and so an entirely computer animated film really was a thing from the future. Now we’re in the future Toy Story has taken on an air of being, dare I say it, ‘vintage’ for its comparatively primitive technology.

But Toy Story is not about to flail off the radar because of its age. The story, characterization and screenplay are far too magnificently created to allow for such an undeserved fate and undeniably Toy Story is not only the film which saw Toy Story 2 and 3 receive such a huge amount of success, but Pixar as a production company.

From the off, Toy Story smacks of ingenuity and imagination: Woody’s complicated master-plan to comfort the rest of the Toys on the much-dreaded occurrence of Andy’s birthday party sets the tone of the film flawlessly and when Buzz shows up distinctly uninvited, the scene very much resembles the starting date of a young upstart post-graduate in a company full of over-forties, only with more lasering. Actually, assignments and roles are a key theme in this film and this is one of the reasons it has stood the test of time as well as it has: for the kiddies it is about toys, but for the adults their playtime represents the workplace, where it’s often a dog-eat-dog world and the fear of replacement lurks in the back of most of our minds at some point.

Woody is so firmly in control at the beginning that when he is demoted it is more than just a reallocation of duty for him, but a total loss of everything he held to be true about his sense of self worth, to the point where he would go to any length to get Andy back, even lobbing Buzz out of an open window (albeit accidentally). It is not long before he follows suit, and soon Woody is fending for himself as a ‘lost toy’ with only the head-strong, self confident Buzz to help him. We all know what happens next: the two toys triumph over adversity in the form of Sid and a rocket firework, save each other in the process and return to Andy in his new house as the best of friends; a classic Disney friendship arc within an atypical exploration into the adult world through a format we can all relate to, a child’s toy box.

On the solid foundation built for it by this film’ success, the Toy Story franchise has grown to dizzying heights or to put it more aptly, to infinity and beyond.

Dani Singer