Every Pixar Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

4. Toy Story

Toy Story is based on something incredibly simple: an irresistible What If that must have occurred to every child who ever played with a toy. On a grander scale it explores existential anxieties and philosophical quandaries, but the grain it grows from is as simple and universal as wondering whether the world is still there when you blink.

The art and success of the film is all about the layers John Lasseter added to that premise. The story isn't just concerned with the issue of toys being alive, it's more interested in what would happen if they were as flawed, as neurotic and as desperately seeking validation as we are.

So we get a spaceman who suffers a crisis of identity, a malicious cowboy struggling with replacement anxiety and a host of other childhood favourites basically reimagined as outpatients of a psychiatric ward. And thanks to perfect casting from top to bottom, their flaws are entirely ignorable in favour of their charms to the point where they feel like genuine family members.