TheVictoriousV

In 1995, the year of my birth, the world's first feature-length computer-animated film was created by Pixar and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Ever since then, Pixar has saved Disney's skin on numerous occasions (especially during the early 2000s) and, ultimately, become another head on the Hydra following a 2006 buyout (more on that in a bit). I remember still how I walked around like a dumb little toddler, sometimes looking at this strange-looking VHS on my parents' shelf. The characters didn't quite resemble cartoons, nor did they appear to be real people. What kind of movie was it? What strangeness was I beholding?

I started asking my dad about it, and he began explaining what the movie was about and what the characters were named. (My English skills weren't yet extant, so I would often refer to them as Voody and Bas Latty.) When I saw it, it was like nothing I had ever seen before, and it became one of the most important films of my childhood. In this review, which is partly based on a "Favorite Movies" segment that's been in my Drafts library since before there was a Toy Story 4 (and was initially meant to cover the entire "trilogy"), I will be going over my thoughts on the original.

Directed by John Lasseter and co-conceived by him, Joe Ranft, Andrew Stanton, and Pete Docter, Toy Story is set in the suburban home of a boy named Andy, a kid who, as we quickly realize, deeply loves his toys. What he doesn't know is that when he leaves the room, the toys come to life -- a concept that had been seen in things like the Raggedy Ann film and Jim Henson's Secret Life of Toys, yet rarely seemed as real as it did here.

Led by Andy's favourite toy, a pull-string cowboy doll named Sheriff Woody (a superb Tom Hanks), they start to get worried as Andy's birthday draws near. If Andy gets a new, cool toy, which one of them will he put away and be cursed with an eternal fate in the attic? Woody doesn't think there is a cause for alarm, but when Andy's birthday hits, he is proven wrong. Andy receives a Buzz Lightyear action figure, a science fiction "space ranger" with lasers, wings, a voice box, and other things Woody starts to envy. Now, Buzz, with the voice of Tim Allen, is an unusual case. Unlike the other toys who know they're toys, Buzz actually thinks he is a hero from a Star Wars-esque galaxy and that Andy's bedroom is an alien planet (the fact that he still freezes up in the presence of humans, I chalk up to some kind of innate, immutable reflex among toys). Nevertheless, Woody and Buzz become rivals, and after much fighting (which famously got even uglier in an earlier rendition of the film), the two toys are separated from Andy during a night on the town.

Woody and Buzz set out on a quest to return home to Andy. They begin their search at Pizza Planet, Andy's favorite pizza place (which has since featured in every Pixar title in some fashion and is basically Chuck-E-Cheese but with sci-fi references), where they meet some weird squeaky alien toys who also seem to think they're real. They fall into the clutches of Sid (Erik von Detten), Andy's neighbour who loves to break toys and use the parts to create memorably bizarre monstrosities. It is also here that Buzz finally learns that he isn't actually the real Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, but merely a plastic simulacrum. It is difficult not to shed a tear at this sequence; it is clear that the realization broke whatever works as a heart in action figure anatomy.

As dated as the film's animation looks, especially on a 4K Blu-ray or whatever else, the character animation on both Woody and Buzz remains superbly expressive and entertaining -- but one definitely understands why they moved on to base their human characters from stylized storyboards, as with their later masterworks The Incredibles and Ratatouille, instead of attempting to craft them right there in the computer. (SIDE NOTE: Toy Story didn't look "good at the time" just because it was the first of its kind, but also, I reckon, because the original, recently leaked 35mm film print -- and the grain thereof -- helps conceal the imperfect rendering, yet still looks crisp, detailed, and "like you can reach out and touch it" in a different way.)

It was smart of Pixar to start with basic shapes, bugs, and inanimate objects -- which are already meant to look plastic -- for their earliest characters, not just here but in their 1980s 3D-animated shorts Luxo Jr., Tin Toy, Knick Knack, and their Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Project debut, The Adventures of André and Wally B. But boy, did they give those toys life, not just via the emotive animation, but through the writing.

There is a popular way to interpret the relationship between Andy and his toys: In none of the three films do we see his father. Instead, his father is represented by Woody, who gets pushed aside when the cool, rich stepfather, represented by Buzz, comes in and steals Andy away from him. The film could certainly be a parable about a father trying to win back the love of his son, yet learning to bond with the stepfather in the meantime. In another sense, the movie is simply about toys and what they mean for our imaginations. It also mirrors the way American Westerns went out of fashion around the Space Race.

Something I think we all remember -- and agree about -- are those delightful tunes by Randy Newman. The Swedish versions of his "You've Got A Friend In Me", "Sailing", and "Strange Things" still fill my soul to the brim with feelings of nostalgia. The score, also by Newman, is equally wonderful. Sourpusses rag on him for his odd way of singing and his sometimes banal lyrics, but who can say they don't vividly remember his catchy and/or heartbreaking scores for A Bug's Life, Monsters Inc., and, indeed, Toy Story? That music that plays near the end, when Buzz proves to Woody that maybe he can fly after all, always takes me back to my childhood; it used to make me sad that the movie was almost over.

A rich supporting cast includes Don Rickles as Mr. Potato Head, Jim Varney as Slinky Dog, John Ratzenberger as Hamm the piggy bank, Annie Potts as Woody's beloved Bo Peep, Wallace Shawn as Rex the cowardly dinosaur, and R. Lee Ermey as Sarge -- all memorable and distinct in their own right. We'd get to see them again four years later in Toy Story 2, which I may do another "Favorite Movies" post on when the time comes (they were here joined by Barbie in her feature film debut, as Mattel realized they f---ed up by not letting them reference their brand in the first one), and in 2010's Toy Story 3, which we may call the end of an era:

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Right around here, Pixar's motivations became more blatantly monetary, giving us more and more sequels, prequels, shorts, et cetera. (I'm sure someone was bathing in cash thanks to IRL Buzzes and LGMs back in the day, but even so.) Fast forward 15 years, there's a bevy of Toy Story short films on Disney+, a Lightyear movie that presents itself as the film Andy saw IN the Toy Story "universe" that inspired him to admire the Buzz Lightyear franchise (even though the film we got feels very much like a quippy 2020s post-MCU action flick instead of a 1995 sci-fi), and, naturally, a SEQUEL to the great finale that was Toy Story 3. (These days, even when Pixar attempts something more original and stylized, it by and large fails to connect.)

One wonders if younger generations realize just how perfect Toy Story was at one point. For Millennials especially, this was a franchise -- a story -- that was with us when we were kids and came back to send us off as we came of age, just as little Andy did in the third and, at the time, final Toy Story film, leaving his toys to someone else as he went on his way into young adulthood. (The movies worked on a different but similar level for those who raised us.) It was some of the most perfectly poignant -- and perfectly timed -- closure I've ever seen in a film trilogy. And now... here we are.

The original movie remains a masterpiece; it's eternally quotable, perfectly paced, effective in its character and world-building, rife with immaculate sound design, and, yes, quite funny.

The older I get, the more I hold the first Toy Story to be the funniest. I've always treasured it, as I said, but felt, as a child, that Toy Story 2 and eventually 3 were more exciting and overtly hilarious. Today, there's something I miss about the dialogue and snide interactions of the original, which feel more like something from the writers of Seinfeld or The Simpsons than the same creatives who would later bring us Spanish Buzz and Duke Kaboom. (It made sense to learn that Jeffrey "DreamWorks" Katzenberg, who was still at Disney at the time, oversaw the writing of this film, bringing in additional writers to add some "edge" to the script -- we even get some gore, technically.)

And of course, this movie was/is just straight-up legendary in its gamble -- as DazzReview puts it, the failure of this film could've "halted the CGI movement entirely" and also feasibly bankrupted Steve Jobs, who of course ran Pixar before Disney acquired it and wasn't exactly raking in huge profits back then. In short, much hinged on Toy Story. And as I'm sitting here, waiting for the trailer for Toy Story 5 and also looking at how far "computer animation" has gotten (namely to a point where the computers are generating their own animations, based on prompts from tech bros who think they're artists and that "art" is just "when pictures happen"), I wonder if we will come to think of this film as an Oppenheimer moment.

Shelby Oaks is the filmmaking debut of Chris Stuckmann, the YouTube movie critic who rarely says anything too interesting about the works he reviews but seems all the more beloved (or at least un-controversial) for it. So how is it? Has it shut down the idea that (A) critics can't actually make the art that they criticize, hence why they chose to instead be critics, and (B) people who started out as "YouTubers", first and foremost, can never be real filmmakers? (See also the discourse around Bring Her Back.)

As movies go, it's nothing spectacular, but nothing really jumps out as egregiously amateurish or a telltale sign that some mere mortal who vlogs about media made this film. As true as that may be, I must also judge it as a film production, and as such, Shelby Oaks contains moments of skillful atmosphere but ultimately ends up a shakily acted, jumpscare-realiant horror show whose characters are too dumb to be cared about.

It is a "part-found footage" horror film based on an ARG (Alternate Reality Game) web series about a group of paranormal investigators with their own YouTube channel, Paranormal Paranoids. As the movie begins, they have all gone missing or been found dead, and the sister of one of them decides to look more deeply into it. Once again, it occasionally achieves great suspense and chilling atmosphere, and the opening mockumentary section is terrifically unsettling. While I wish I could be even more positive, Shelby Oaks is nevertheless a film I appreciate:

I am glad Stuckmann got to where he is, and I shall be eager to see what he makes next. Thank you for reading, don't forget to hit that like button.

Well, what do you say about The Running Man? In terms of 2025 adaptations of old Stephen King novels that constitute a sort of "Hunger Games or Squid Game before Hunger Games and Squid Game", it's not as good as The Long Walk. In terms of 2025 remakes/sequels to a 1980s Schwarzenegger classic, it's not as good as Predator: Badlands. In terms of Edgar Wright movies, it's... unfortunate. (People argue Wright stopped trying after being disillusioned by losing Ant-Man in 2015, but this suggests that Baby Driver was bad and I won't allow it.)

Did we need this? The movie itself seems to think so, as the satire of the original film and book are, ostensibly, extra relevant in the age of ICE, Trumpism, increasingly unaffordable healthcare, AI fakery, and game shows that are more about winning enough money for your own bills than enough for a luxury trip abroad -- some of said shows even being inspired by prior satires of the state of things, e.g. The various "real" versions of the contest in Squid Game. Alas, this picture gets bogged down in attempts at "importance" and only rarely works as a fun sci-fi action romp. Would you believe me if I said that, as satires go, even the original film -- in which a tights-wearing Schwarzenegger spouts puns while killing opera-singing assassins and chainsaw guys -- had a cleverer way of going about it, despite being primarily an action flick?

One wishes -- naively so -- that Wright would have gone for a retrofuturist vision like that of the 1987 version, with its Atari-looking monitors, aerobics videos keeping the populace glued to their telescreen (when the Running Man event isn't on, of course), and all those one-liners. I like Glenn Powell and he's pretty charming here, but there will never be another Arnold. And maybe that's okay.