Pixar's best film: Toy Story Toy Story invented everything. As the first feature-length computer-animated film in 1995, it gave birth to a whole new era of filmmaking, and proved that "not hand drawn" needn't mean "lacking personality" in any way. It launched Pixar as the huge creative force in family entertainment they still are. It introduced us to Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and Andy's other toys - characters whose adventures in trying to escape abandonment have become culturally unforgettable in the decades since. It spawned two great sequels, among the greatest ever made, which nonetheless owe their greatness to it, and not just as a template for improvement, or a rock-solid foundation for even finer work. Basically, it's an easy task to argue that Toy Story is Pixar's most important, original and influential film. It's harder but still necessary to call it their best. This is largely a matter of story - it has the kind of structure you couldn't learn from a textbook, unless it was the best ever written (one entirely illustrated by Toy Story, say). In quality of premise, pace, momentum and emotional stakes, it's devastatingly close to unbeatable. Pixar set themselves a high bar which they've sometimes neared, even matched - especially in the opening act of Wall-E - but never surpassed over a full movie innings. Mr Potato Head and friends in Toy Story (Rex) It must have been daunting not to disappoint their audience in the years that followed. I think we've learned not to expect a Toy Story every time, to protect ourselves from constant dismay. It would be madness to expect characterisation this rich, relatable and plausibly developed whenever we sit down to a cartoon that's not this. The film is about things, fundamental things, that children get and adults can have a stab at articulating - it's about getting along. If I had children and they were squabbling, or snatching toys, I'd show them Toy Story, to revel in everything Woody and Buzz get wrong, before they get it so beautifully right. They'd laugh, they'd cry, these putative kids. They don't exist, but they might learn to co-exist.