TOY STORY. Directed by John Lasseter. Written by Joss Whedon, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen, and Alec Sokolow. With the voices of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn, Jim Varney, John Ratzenberger, and Annie Potts. A Walt Disney Pictures release. At the Copley Place, the Fresh Pond, and the West Newton and in the suburbs.

For a movie being sold as a high-tech milestone, Toy Story, the first fully computer-animated feature, is pleasingly modest. The filmmakers have cleverly worked out ways to show off the capabilities of computer animation that don't violate the story. Nothing feels superfluous, included just to wow us. Toy Story is blessedly free of the assaultiveness and noise that are the usual earmarks of high-tech productions. The director, John Lasseter, keeps things moving along at a good pace, and the length, 75 minutes, feels just right. Even very young kids will be able to sit through Toy Story without getting restless. And the adults who take them won't feel trapped. It's not as enchanting or magical as this year's earlier A Little Princess and Babe (both of them among the best movies of what's shaping up to be a very good movie year), but the movie is consistently engaging and funny.

The conceit of Toy Story is the age-old child's fantasy that our toys are alive when we aren't around to see them, and that they have feelings too. There's a trace of mawkishness in that, but the movie plays those feelings mostly for laughs as each birthday or Christmas gives rise to the anxiety that Andy, the little boy to whom the toys belong, will discard his old favorites in favor of some new gizmo. That's what happens to Woody (vocalized by Tom Hanks), a favored cowboy doll who's cast aside for Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), a stubborn and dunderheaded astronaut figure who believes he really is a space adventurer landed on some strange planet. The story has to do with how Woody and Buzz learn to trust each other when, through a chain of accidents, they end up away from Andy and have to make their way back home. In the best sequence, they wind up in the clutches of Sid, the evil neighbor boy who mutilates and rearranges his toys into jerry-built horrors that Tim Burton might be proud to claim.

Much of what's funniest has to do with the cast. My reaction to Tim Allen has always been "Huh?" But his Buzz, who has muscles across his chest and between his ears, is a marvelous parody of the all-American action hero. And I laughed at just about everything from Don Rickles (as a blowhard Mr. Potato Head) and Wallace Shawn (inspired, as a neurotic dinosaur who's too insecure to be scary). Some of the movie's visual design owes a debt to the brilliant children's author and illustrator William Joyce (A Day with Wilbur Robinson, Dinosaur Bob) who worked on it and brings a touch of his retro-surreal deco.

There's also, though, a weird, unacknowledged subtext to Toy Story that has to do with the way faithful, old-fashioned Woody is outshone by the flashier Buzz. The movie uses the toys to make a case for homy wholesomeness in the same way that it pits sadistic Sid (whose room is decorated with heavy-metal posters) against gentle Andy, who, having no video or computer games or anything noticeably modern, wouldn't be out of place in 1955. This strikes me as pretty odd for a movie that's basically a demonstration of a state-of-the-art animation technique, but then computer animation is pretty odd itself.

Watching Toy Story, you have to remind yourself you're not seeing three-dimensional figures photographed in real settings. When a platoon of toy soldiers walks along a baseboard, you can see every chip in the paint, every nick in the wall. A toy car zooming in and out of traffic might have been filmed on a real street. But what's the point of animation that duplicates reality? There's such an unnatural fluidity to the movement, such hyperclarity, that you can never forget the feat of technology that went into it. When you see a brilliant piece of figure animation (like Tim Burton's "Vincent") or clay animation (like Nick Park's The Wrong Trousers, with its climactic chase scene that has the beauty and precision of the best silent comedy), you marvel at the realization of a vision. At Toy Story, you marvel at a sustained special effect. It's consistently entertaining, and I had a good time watching it. But there's a big difference between the way it presents itself and what it is. It's virtual homy.