Toy Story

There are magicians working at Pixar. That's the only explanation. The first movie they ever made, the first one using computer animation, and they hit it out of the park on the first swing. How?

Tom Hanks and Tim Allen are phenomenal. I don't know how else to put it. You can't imagine these characters with anyone else's voices in them, and that's the mark of casting that actually worked. The whole voice cast is locked in, top to bottom. And John Ratzenberger? The man became an icon because of this movie. Pixar's good luck charm starts right here.

Sometimes a movie is just firing on every cylinder and you tip your cap.

The quotes from this thing are legendary at this point. You've heard them. Your friends have heard them. Your friends' kids have heard them. Lines from a 1995 movie are still in the rotation thirty years later, and that doesn't happen by accident.

The plot? Great. The story? Great. All of it, great. I'm not going to pretend I've got some clever angle on it. Sometimes a movie is just firing on every cylinder and you tip your cap.

Seeing it in a theater took it up another notch. There's something about sitting in the dark with friends and a crowd for a movie this beloved that you can't replicate on a couch.

Way better than I had any right to expect going in. And it stuck with me afterward, which is what the great ones do. If you somehow haven't seen Toy Story, fix that.