Notes on Toy Story (1995)

 

Director: John Lasseter Producer: Ralph Guggenheim, Bonnie Arnold
Script: Joss Whedon, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen, Alec Sokolow Editor: Robert Gordon, Lee Unkrich
Music: Randy Newman Art Direction: Ralph Eggleston

Disney/Pixar/Buena Vista, 81 min. Release Date: Nov. 22, 1995.


Cast

Character Actor Name
Woody Tom Hanks
Buzz Lightyear Tim Allen
Mr. Potato Head Don Rickles
Slinky Dog Jim Varney
Andy John Morris
Sid Erik Von Detten
Rex Wallace Shawn

Commentary

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.--Roger Ebert

Continuously inventive, Toy Story has a number of cheerful set pieces that keep it lively. One of the cleverest is a visit to the fast food Pizza Planet, where Buzz and Woody end up inside a kind of gum-ball machine whose inhabitants worship the claw that conveys them to the outside world. It's a deft, wacky sequence, complete with Woody shouting, "Stop it, you zealots," at the three-eyed figures, and it typifies why Toy Story is a captivating first step along animation's most promising new frontier.--Kenneth Turan

We never get caught up in how great something looks. It's the story that keeps people entertained. If you get a great story with great characters and then you put great imagery on top of that, it makes a great package. That's what we set out to do, to give the audience great entertainment.--John Lasseter