🎬 Movie🧒 Little Kids · Ages 3–6Animation

Toy Story (1995)

Name: Toy Story
Released: 1995

About This Movie

Woody, a pull-string cowboy who has always been Andy's favorite toy, faces an existential crisis when a flashy new spaceman named Buzz Lightyear arrives in the bedroom. Their rivalry turns into a desperate buddy adventure as both toys get lost and have to find their way home. The premise is irresistible, the script is airtight, and the emotional payoff is enormous for a film about plastic and stuffing.

Why It's a Classic

Toy Story was the first fully computer-animated feature film, and the fact that it also happens to be brilliantly written is the reason Pixar became Pixar. Joss Whedon, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen, and Alec Sokolow built a screenplay where every joke serves the story and every scene raises the stakes, giving the film a structural tightness that most live-action comedies would envy. Woody's jealousy of Buzz is genuinely uncomfortable to watch at times, and the film does not let him off the hook easily; he has to earn his redemption through the entire Sid Phillips ordeal. Tom Hanks and Tim Allen discovered a vocal chemistry that carries real warmth beneath the bickering, and Hanks in particular brings a vulnerability to Woody that grounds the whole enterprise. The decision to set the climactic chase on a moving truck, with Buzz strapped to a rocket, remains one of the great action sequences in animated film.

Fun Fact

The original version of Toy Story, shown to Disney executives in a disastrous 1993 screening known internally as "Black Friday," featured a mean, sarcastic Woody who was so unlikable that Disney nearly shut down the entire project. Billy Crystal was offered the role of Buzz Lightyear and turned it down, a decision he has publicly called his biggest career regret. Each frame of the film took between four and thirteen hours to render on the computers available in 1995.

Parent Note

Sid, the toy-destroying neighbor kid, and his mutant toy creations are the primary source of scariness here. The scene where Woody and the mutant toys confront Sid is played for horror-comedy and can startle younger viewers. There is also an extended sequence where Buzz discovers he is a toy, not a real space ranger, that carries a surprising emotional heaviness. Most kids aged four and up handle the film comfortably, and the adventure elements keep the pacing lively enough that the darker moments pass quickly.