Toy Story 4K Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		5.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

Toy Story 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Disney has released 1995's groundbreaking digitally animated film 'Toy Story' to the UHD format. The release includes a new 2160p/HDR transfer and a Dolby Atmos soundtrack. The bundled Blu-ray is for all intents and purposes identical to the 2010 release. The studio is also offering 'Toy Story 2' and 'Toy Story 3' in similar UHD configurations.

Toy Story 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Toy Story's upscaled 2160p/HDR UHD presentation offers a reliable improvement over the Blu-ray, though the changes, particularly to detail and clarity, are not extreme. The white opening titles pop with a significant add to brilliance and luminance. Under the HDR coloring, there is a nice total add to color intensity and brightness. Various colors pop with much greater boldness and vividness. The image is certainly brighter overall but doesn't lighten colors. Instead the palette appears much more solidified, enjoying a healthier, deeper, and more accurate feel for the colorful toys on display, the woods on Andy's floor, the bright lights around the pizza place, and along neighborhood streets seen in the film's final minutes. One of the highlights is the nighttime Dinoco gas station scene which appears about 30 minutes into the film. With its intense fluorescent lights against a dark nighttime backdrop, it's one of the more impressive adds to HDR brightness and luminance on offer.

Texturally, the improvements from the Blu-ray are a little more subtle. The UHD image finds a slightly greater feel for sharpness and textural detailing overall, but never is the presentation a dramatic, eye-opening explosion of brand new levels of clarity. There's a good close-up of Woody, crumpled up and lying on the floor, watching Andy get excited over the party his mom is preparing for him very early in the film. It's a good, stable shot allowing for effortless back-and-forth comparison of Wody's Western-style clothes, the little dings on his face, and the surrounding house details (though viewers will have to contend with the obscenely large and annoyingly static box Disney insists on slapping on the screen). It is a fine, telling example of the UHD's improvements. Of course in-motion comparisons -- how one actually watches the movie rather than looks at it -- are always better than stills, and even flipping back and forth and comparing scenes rather than paused screens reveals an obvious uptick in sharpness and clarity, though again such are not dramatic. But considering the plastics that make up the toys, the clothes some of them wear, wooden floors and furnishings and the scuffs and dings around the house, all of it enjoys a steady, albeit light, feel for improved textural goodness.

This is also a very early digital production, so there are some imperfections that seem inherent to the source, particularly some aliasing and shimmering and some noisy looking components, which appear amplified on the UHD. Take a look at the 6:30 mark, at the edge of the window frame at the top-center of the screen. It's a fine example of some of the imperfections that are visible throughout (and are also visible on the Blu-ray but, again, less readily obvious there). Also, the way the digital artists "painted" some of the walls and columns and crown molding around the house almost make them look like they are home to banding artifacts, but it appears to just be the way they were finished in the computer.

Toy Story 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Toy Story features a Dolby Atmos soundtrack which is yet another Disney release that requires a fairly substantial upward movement for the volume dial (about 7db on this reviewer's system) to have it approach a fairly normal listening level. Once there, the track satisfies. There's curiously not a feel for good, big, surround sound reverb when Woody addresses the toys in chapter four through a microphone (and perhaps the sound design never allowed for it). The moment offers a nice front end stretch but no real major back or overhead usage. The track does open to immersive chaos when the toys panic as guests begin to arrive at Andy's party moments later and as the children storm into Andy's room after the party. The track finds some additional excitement when Buzz "flies" around the room, with some help. Various zips and zooms through the stage yield significant rearward engagement. The subwoofer chimes in on occasion. The boy next door, Sid, "tortures toys" and in one scene explodes an action figure with a solid feel for sudden depth and punch. A rolling globe that chases Buzz out of the house in chapter 10 additionally offers a solid low end push. There is a feel for powerful overhead depth and engagement when a semi rolls into a gas station in chapter 12 and rumbles to an idling stop. The idling engine offers a nice, lingering, immersive effect, too. Music is pleasantly detailed and occasionally finds a rear component, such as when Sid "wins" Buzz and Woody from a claw machine game at Pizza Planet about halfway through the film. That location is home to some of the more active and interesting sound effects which dot the entire stage. The film's climax offers a collection of big music and full-stage active effects. Dialogue is clear, well prioritized, and firmly planted in the front center channel.

Toy Story 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Toy Story's UHD disc contains no supplemental features. The bundled Blu-ray is essentially identical to that released in 2010; the disc ditches BD-Live functionality and a feature on using the Disney digital file copy. See below for a breakdown of what's included. For full supplemental content coverage, please click here. This release ships with a Movies Anywhere digital copy code. It also ships with an embossed slipcover.

• Toy Story 3 Sneak Peek: "The Story"
• Audio Commentary: Director John Lasseter, Co-Writer Andrew Stanton, Supervising Animator Pete Docter, Art Director Ralph Eggleston, Supervising Technical Director Bill Reeves, and Producers Ralph Guggenheim and Bonnie Arnold.
• Buzz Lightyear Mission Logs: Blast Off
• Paths to Pixar: Artists
• Studio Stories: John's Car
• Studio Stories: Baby AJ
• Studio Stories: Scooter Races
• Buzz Takes Manhattan
• Black Friday: The Toy Story You Never Saw
• Filmmakers Reflect
• Making Toy Story
• The Legacy of Toy Story
• Designing Toy Story
• Deleted Scenes
• Design Galleries
• Story
• Production
• Music & Sound
• Publicity

Toy Story 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Toy Story is, of course, one of the classics in the Pixar canon and in the general digitally animated realm. The movie has been surpassed -- even by its sequels -- by several of the company's other films, but it remains a terrific watch and certainly a piece of movie history. Disney's UHD is good, even if it's not a gargantuan upgrade over the existing Blu-ray. The HDR color additions are certainly this UHD's highlight. The modest textural bumps are nice, but the increase in tonal boldness and brightness are a boon for the movie. The Atmos audio is fairly good once the volume is adjusted, and Disney has ported over the extensive supplemental collection from the old Blu-ray. Highly recommended.