You've Got A Friend In Me

For blog five, I chose the Disney film, Toy Story. Toy Story is about a boy named Andy who owns a variety of different toys, but he favors one, Woody. While Andy is away however, all of these toys come alive. On Andy’s’ birthday, he receives a shiny new toy (Buzz), which soon becomes his favorite and causes Woody to become jealous. In Woody’s attempt to get rid of Buzz, they both end up lost and with the help of their other toy friends, try to find their way home before Andy realizes they are gone. I would say that it is very apparent that the intended audience for this film is for children. I am supported by the fact that Disney is the most popular child-film producing company, and is well known for making nothing but child appropriate films.

 In this movie I feel as though there are several messages that you can take away from this film, that are positive. The first positive message I could point out, is that of friendship. The theme song of Toy Story is “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” by Randy Newman, which is played in several scenes throughout the movie.  At the being of Woody and Buzz’s friendship, it seems as though they are enemies. But as they face problems, their friendship grows and they realize that they can actually co-exist when they set aside their egos and work together. When they come face to face with situations that present the potential  risk of the loss of one another, they realize how much they mean to each other, and I feel like that relates very much so to friendships that occur in everyday life.  The second positive message I discovered throughout this film was “teamwork makes the dream work.” Throughout the movie, Woody, Buzz, and several of the other toys all come together to accomplish one mission. They never leave anyone behind, and they do whatever it takes to stay together and get the job done. This message can be relayed to teams or families, because that’s what these toys have become to each other: family. I do think that Disney and the producers of this film did a very good job of making these arguments effective, as I found that they were easy to catch and perceive.

I have not seen a lot of animated/ children’s films, as I was a weird kid growing up that was only fond of movies more suitable for adults. But even though I didn’t see this movie until I was around the age of seven or eight, I still felt that this was a great movie for kids to watch and that it presented a good clear message. I would like to give this film a rating of three director’s cuts. It was fantastic!