Toy Story


Toy Story is definitely a monumental film. It's the first 3d CGI animated film. It has great voice acting from Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, and the characters of Woody and Buzz are very well-defined. The conflict is set up quite nicely and there's a satisfying story within the movie. There are moments that are genuinely terrifying for children and for adults. Another great thing about the film is the iconic song You've Got a Friend in Me.  Randy Newman really excels at writing those kinds of songs. Having said all of that and getting a mountain of praise out of the way for the movie which it completely deserves it, the film doesn't really hold up. The animation is very creepy, it is solidly in the uncanny valley. The toy characters are fine because they're toys, and you don't expect toys to look life-like. In that sense, it was a great choice to kick off computer animation with a film about toys.  But there are some human characters in the film, and they are horrifying-they look really, really creepy, they don't move naturally. The faultiness of the animation really brings it down for me, and it's kind of ironic because they needed to make the movie to push the technology forward, but the technology wasn't really at a point where it could make a satisfying movie.

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