TOY STORY - Blu-ray 3D review

When I visited Pixar Canada earlier this month, I saw what looked like maquettes of Woody and Buzz Lightyear encased in glass. Cool, I thought. Then creative director Dylan Brown explained that they were really 3D prints made from a special machine that reads the full 360-degree image and prints using glue and ink. Astounding, I corrected myself.

So was "Toy Story" (1995), which was the first completely CGI animated feature film ever made, launching not just Pixar films, but a whole new industry of CGI-animated full-length movies.

Subsequent Pixar features have all been hits--"A Bug's Life" (1998), "Toy Story 2" (1999), "Monsters, Inc." (2001), "Finding Nemo" (2003), "The Incredibles" (2004), "Cars" (2006), "Ratatouille" (2007), "WALL-E" (2008), "Up" (2009), and "Toy Story 3" (2010)--but it was "Toy Story" that opened the door. Now, with the financial success of 3D movies, Disney-Pixar is going back and re-formatting some of their catalog titles for 3D television monitors. What I said about the Blu-rays of this series holds true for the 3D releases as well: "Toy Story 2" and "Toy Story 3" are WOWs in Blu-ray, while "Toy Story" is more like a wow.

Like the recent "Cars 2" release, this combo pack includes a 3D Blu-ray, standard Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital Copy. I really like having all formats in one compact package, and I think this combo pack style of marketing will continue to be a hit with fans.

In "Toy Story," toys break their unwritten rule of toy silence and stillness by revolting against a rough boy who abuses his toys. You can see why John Lasseter and his Pixar bunch initially opted for a script that features toys. They're easier to master than human skin and features, and this toy bunch looks more realistic than the dog in "Toy Story." But in HD you really start to notice details that might have slipped past you on the DVD, and 3D offers yet another way to see the film. Almost every frame is a revelation.

Like many Pixar stories, "Toy Story" doesn't have all that complicated of a plot. Andy's toys fret that with a birthday party and new presents there will come toys that will compete for Andy's attention. The leader of this bunch is Woody (Tom Hanks), an Old West sheriff doll who has a soft spot for Bo Peep (Annie Potts), who adorns Andy's lamp. Among the featured toys are nostalgic favorites from the 1950s and '60s, including Mr. Potato Head (Don Rickles), Slinky Dog (Jim Varney), a piggy bank (John Ratzenberger), and a T-Rex (Wallace Shawn). Anyone who grew up in this era will recognize almost everything here, from the Etch-a-Sketch to those little green molded plastic army men that little boys lined up for pretend battles.

When Andy (John Morris) receives a spiffy new Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) action figure, the new toy doesn't just compete with Woody for the place of honor on Andy's bed. He also doesn't get the fact that he's just a toy. He really thinks he is Buzz Lightyear, capable of flight and armed with a laser that can zap intergalactic arch-enemy Zurg. It's that kind of conceptual stroke-of-genius that characterizes the Pixar way of doing things, because that simple concept serves as both a source of humor and an important plot point. The other narrative threads in "Toy Story" are the mistreatment of toys by rough-boy next door Sid (Erik von Detten) and an impending move by Andy's family . . . another thing that stresses out the toys, because that means a yard sale (where some might be sold) or the actual move (where some toys might get lost or left behind).

Along the way there are subtle allusions to all aspects of American culture. In one memorable scene, Lasseter and Co. even have some fun with ontology and being. At the Pizza Palace an popular arcade game, the claw crane, ends up as a supreme being to all the little green toy men inside, who point to it and say, as one of them is grabbed and taken from their midst, "He has been chosen." And the toy "goes to a better place."

From the beginning, Pixar did almost everything right. They created sympathetic characters that made audiences care about them. To capitalize on the nostalgia factor they used real toys, except for the two heroes--Buzz and Woody--and that separation gave the two special status. They got Randy Newman to write some memorable songs. They threw in plenty of action and adventure. They made sure that there was lots of humor. And taking a page from Disney, they balanced the humor with moments of pathos. When you do all that and throw in a clever script and accomplished artwork and animation, you can't help but hit a digitalized home run. As John J. Puccio summarized in an earlier review, it's a "sweet fable." What's not to like?

Video:
There are times when the depth of field isn't much different (at least to my eyes) from the Blu-ray, and, compared to more recent 3D animated films, very little happens to push past the plane of the glass. Yes, you'll see Buzz and Woody fly toward you as they light the rocket and zoom toward other characters in the moving van, but scenes like those don't occur as often as some fans would like. But remember, this was the very first all-CGI film, and the quality of CGI work improved by leaps and bounds in the years that followed. Whether you watch in Blu-ray or 3D Blu-ray, you can tell the difference. Still, fans of 3D ought to be happy with this release, because you really do notice new things, and the colors, black levels, and amount of detail are wonderful to behold. As for the transfer, there are a number of scenes where you see slight ghosting if you're looking for it, but nothing that stands out if you're not. "Toy Story" comes to 3D Blu-ray via an MVC/MPEG-4 transfer to a 50GB disc, and like the Blu-ray it's presented in 1.78:1 aspect ratio.

Audio:
Disney-Pixar rigged the English DTS-HD MA 5.1 lossless audio so that it plays loudly, and even the littlest scuttle across the floor by a toy is amplified with pin-drop clarity. What's more, there's a pleasing logic to the distribution of sounds across the channels so that it all feels natural. The same soundtrack seems to be used for both the Blu-ray and 3D Blu-ray. All the speakers are involved for all of the film, and the sound is pushed away from the source so that it fills the room nicely. The .1 in this audio--the low-frequency effects channel--has a nice presence, especially in action scenes, as when Buzz has a skyrocket strapped to his back and he and Woody roar through traffic.

For those who think the 5.1 too much, there's a tamer (and less resonant) English 2.0 DTS-HD, as well as English DVS 2.0 Dolby, and Spanish and French Dolby Digital 5.1 EX, with subtitles in English SDH, French, and Spanish.

Extras:
As far as I can tell, all of the bonus features from a previously released DVD have been included here, along with roughly a half-hour of new content imported from the Blu-ray release. These include:

--A trailer for "Toy Story 3"
--Buzz Lightyear Mission Logs: Episode One: Blast Off (Buzz reports back about his adventure to the International Space Station in this in-character bonus feature.
--Paths to Pixar: Artists, a series of clips in which Pixar artists share how they got to where they are and offer advice for aspiring animators.
--Studio Stories, three extended anecdotes about Pixar inside jokes: Lasseter's beat-up car, the crew's fascination with Halloween and "Baby AJ," and the scooter races that Lasseter and his employees do to release tension.
--Buzz Takes Manhattan, a clip of the Buzz Lightyear balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
--Black Friday: The Toy Story You Never Saw, in which filmmakers talk about an early cut of the film that was so off it nearly shut down production entirely.

As for what else is here, there's a number of featurettes that cover different aspects of the filmmaking process. Lasseter and his cohorts have a roundtable in one 17-minute segment, while they return for a standard making-of feature of slightly longer length. Only six minutes is spent on design, with another half-hour of design tests. Then there's segments on story, production, music and sound, publicity, deleted scenes, and the legacy of "Toy Story," all of which run a collective two hours or so--again, taken from a previous release. And that's not counting the better-than-average commentary track by Lasseter, co-writer Andrew Stanton, supervising animator Pete Docter, supervising technical director Bill Reeves, art director Ralph Eggleston, and producers Ralph Guggenheim and Bonnie Arnold.

Bottom Line:
Just as Disney fans will always have a soft spot for "Snow White," Pixar junkies will continue to revere "Toy Story," the film that started it all. And rightly so. This film had everything, and though some of the animation seems dated compared to later Pixar efforts and not nearly as detailed, what's here is done impeccably well, whether you enjoy it in 3D or standard Blu-ray.