#99 Toy Story (1995)

So...this is obviously one of the 31 I've already seen.  I don't live under a rock, people!  However, I can't say for certain, but I don't think I've sat down and watched it all the way through since it came out in the theatres fifteen years ago...until today, that is.  DUN!

Plot summary (with spoilers): A little boy is hanging out in his room playing with his toys, which include a cowboy, a slinky dog, a potato head, a T-Rex, and a Little Bo Peep porcelain doll, like all the little boys have.  The boy's name is Andy.  He grabs the cowboy and bounds down the stairs into the living room, where his mom mentions that he needs to get ready for his birthday party later that afternoon.  Andy scurries upstairs, drops off the cowboy toy, and exits stage left.  Suddenly, the cowboy, previously lying inert, begins to move around.  Holy crap,  we were right!  Just as we always suspected as kids, the toys really do talk and move around when we're not looking!  I told my GI Joes years ago that I was onto them, and they still never had the class to admit it.
Anyway, the cowboy's name is Woody, and he snaps to attention, and calls the rest of the toys to order.  He attempts to casually announce that today is Andy's birthday party, a week earlier than expected, because they're going to be moving shortly afterwards.  The toys all panic, because new toys always mean the possibility that the old ones will be replaced.
Plastic green soldiers are dispatched to spy on the party, and see what gifts Andy receives.  Most of the gifts are clothes and boardgames, which apparently have yet to gain the power of autonomy and sentience.  Andy's toys are relieved.  But wait!  One final toy is taken out of the closet as a surprise.  Andy opens it and is overjoyed.  He and his friends run upstairs to put it in his room.  Woody and the rest freeze in their places, because the...I dunno...Toy Governing Body,  let's say, forbids exposing their ability to move around or speak  to the humans.  (Maybe Toy Story 4 will be a prequel?)  Andy bounds into the room, casually shoves Woody aside and off the bed, and deposits his exciting new toy.  Then because Andy is exceedingly polite, he goes back down to the party and his guests without so much as touching the new toy.  Andy's mom taught the boy right, despite the fact that she is a single mother and therefore a horrible sinner.
Woody, Potato Head, Rex, and the others climb up onto the bed to check out the new toy.  It's a spaceman named Buzz Lightyear.  Buzz doesn't know he's a toy, and instead thinks he's a legit superhero.  All the other toys are enamored of Buzz's flashing lights and pop-up wings, while Woody stews in jealousy and worries he'll be replaced.  Tom Hanks does the best acting job of his life pretending to find Tim Allen in any way threatening.
Turns out, Woody's fears are well-founded.  The cowboy-themed posters and  bedspreads are replaced by space themed ones.  Buzz becomes the toy of choice, residing on the top of the bed, as Woody once did.  And all along, Buzz doesn't even know he's a toy!  One night, when Andy is allowed to just one toy with him to Pizza Planet, Woody knows it won't be him that's chosen unless he can hide Buzz by knocking him back behind the desk.  He tries to use the remote control car to knock Buzz off the desk but misjudges and winds up knocking him out the window.  The car tells the others what happened, and they are furious at Woody, and openly threaten to totally murder him.  We are spared learning what that would actually entail, though, because Andy arrives at just that moment, and when he's unable to find Buzz, takes Woody with him to Pizza Planet.  Down in the yard, Buzz sees Woody being carried into the car, and he grabs onto the bumper of Andy's Mom's car, Cape Fear style (or Sideshow Bob, if you prefer) and goes with them to Pizza Planet.  Mom stops for gas, and Woody escapes from the car, and discovers Buzz.  They start a full-on brawl, which ends suddenly when Mom and Andy take off in the car.
"I'm lost!"  cries Woody.  Buzz, still not accepting his toy status, decides to take off and find his spaceship.  Woody realizes he can never return to the playroom without Buzz, sees a Pizza Planet delivery truck and tricks Buzz into hitching a ride on it, so they can meet up with Andy there.  While at the pizza place, Buzz sees a rocket ship that is actually one of those games where you can use a claw to grab a toy and win it.  Buzz thinks that ship will return him to his home planet (stupid Buzz!) and craws inside.  Woody exasperatedly follows.  Inside are a bunch of religious zealot rubber aliens who worship the claw as a god and let it decide who stays and who goes.  Definitely the movie's funniest gag.  Suddenly a boy shows up at the game.  It's Sid, Andy's neighbor and an evil little shit who tortures and blows up toys.  He uses the claw to grab one of the aliens.  Then he sees Buzz inside.  He uses the claw again, and snags Buzz.  Sid is the best claw player in the history of the world.  Woody tries to keep Buzz from being pulled up, and is pulled up himself as well.   They are taken back home, where the rubber alien is fed to Sid's evil little pit bull, and Woody and Buzz are left in the room, with an assortment of mute, mangled toys with mixed-up and missing body parts.  They're both terrified and attempt to escape the room.  Outside the room, the dog chases them, they split up.  Buzz wanders into the living room and sees an advertisement for himself on TV.  He suddenly realizes he really is a toy.  This breaks him psychologically. Sid returns to his room and decides to launch Buzz on a rocket, actually a highly illegal rocket-shaped firework of some kind.  Unfortunately for Sid, it's raining.  So he straps Buzz to the rocket and goes to bed, prepared for a launch in the morning.  The next morning arrives, and Buzz is taken into the backyard.  Woody gathers the other freak toys and announces a plan, although they "may have to break the rules".  The rules established by who?  Damn you, Toy Story-verse!
And now for the best scene in the movie. Woody and the rest of the toys sneak outside and spread out, Woody lying in plain view. Sid sees Woody scoops him up, and puts him on the barbeque, planning to have a roast later.  He then turns to light the fuse on Buzz's rocket.  Suddenly, the recorded Woody voice begins to speak "reach for the sky!"  Sid is intrigued, but thinks the toy is busted.  "No, you're busted, Sid Phillips!" the Woody voice says.  Sid is terrified.  He goes on to threaten Sid to stop hurting his toys, and the other toys slowly rise up and surround Sid.  "We see everything".  says Woody.  And then he moves and speaks live.  "So. Play. Nice."  Sid screams and throws Woody into the air, and runs inside.  There he discovers his little sister holding a doll.  "The toys are alive! Keep them away!"  The sister gleefully starts chasing Sid around with her doll.  Later that day, Sid's mother found him curled up in the closet, rocking back and forth and silently weeping.  She asked him what was wrong. He explained how the toys in his room came to life and threatened him, but his mother didn't believe him, and wound up taking him to the doctor.  After seeing several specialists, the doctors could find nothing wrong with Sid, and said the problem was all in his head.  Meanwhile, Sid refused to go near any toys, or indeed anything that even appeared to look like a toy.  Was a TV considered a toy?  A wristwatch?  What about clothing?  Literally anything could come alive at any moment!  Sid eventually refused to even leave his room, even after clearing it of every inanimate object.  Ha, "inanimate".  That was a fucking laugh.  Eventually, Sid's parents had him committed to a mental institution, where he resides today.  It's been years, and day by day, bit by bit, Sid gets a little bit better.  He uses silverware now, reasonably confident the knives won't try to cut him, or the forks poke him.  There are good days and bad.  He met a girl.  She thinks she's Eleanor Roosevelt, but other than that, she's all right.  There might be something there.  Sid can go most days now without thinking of toys at all.  But every once in awhile, when he's had too much to eat, or had a bad day in the rec room, he'll wake up in he middle of the night, bolt upright in his cot, and hear those three little words all over again: "So. Play. Nice". And then the night terrors come.
Woody and Buzz attempt to dash across the yard, and just miss Andy and his mom in the car.  Instead they attempted to chase down the moving van behind them.  Unfortunately, Sid's dog is in hot pursuit.  Woody manages to get on the truck, but Buzz is cornered by the dog.  Woody finds the remote car and uses it to rescues Buzz, but the rest of the toys still think he's a toy killer and knock him off the truck.  Eventually, they see Buzz and the car, and try to use Slinky Dog to pull them back on.  This fails, but then Buzz uses the rocket and blah blah you know the rest.
The end.

Stars: Four out of five.


Review: I'll be honest.  When I first saw this movie, I was somewhat underwhelmed.  I didn't think it stacked up to some of Disney's greats, and while the computer graphics were interesting, I didn't think they would ever look as good as hand drawn stuff.  Obviously, hand drawn cartoons are all but gone in the movies now, and CGI has improved by leaps and bounds.  (The humans in this didn't look that great, frankly).  When I watched it this time, I liked it a whole lot more.  I still think the story kind of drags until the last twenty five minutes or so, but really all the Toy Story movies are kind of like that, even TS3, my favorite of all Pixar movies.  TS2 and 3 delved into real human emotions and themes, where here the big emotional moment is Buzz learning he's a toy, which isn't really anything we can identify with.  It's not like the fear of abandonment that gets explored in the other two.  (I'd bend your ear about how in this movie Andy is a metaphor for a parent, in the second, a lover, and in the third, a god, but that would make me seem weird).  I still like this movie a lot, but think it belongs in the bottom tier of Pixar movies.  Well, let's say the top of the bottom.

Does it deserve "Best 100" status: It's not as good as 2, 3, or a bunch of others. But it was the first.  So...yes?  I guess.  You know what, no.  I say no.  Give it to WALL E, Up, or Toy Story 3, dammit.