The year was 1995 and Disney had just given everyone The Lion King and Pocahontas within the past year. Lion King marked a particularly high point for the mouse house, but for many, Pocahontas showed the signs of a decline. And decline hand-drawn animation at Disney did, until a few years later, the morgue…er, Disney vault was filled with the likes of Treasure Planet, Atlantis, and Home on the Range. The corporate coroners that be thereby declared animation dead at Disney.

Good thing Disney got a little help from its friends…or rather the ones it paid for. Enter Pixar during Thanksgiving of 1995 and one little classic called Toy Story. Not only did Toy Story show the viability and vibrancy of a new kind of filmmaking — computer-animated movies, but it did it so damned well that Toy Story has been declared one of the 100 best films of all time by the American Film Institute and one of the most important films of the past few decades by Roger Ebert. It’s all praise well-deserved and praise that can be currently rediscovered.

Currently, Disney is showing a double bill engagement of Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in 3D. “One ticket, two movies, three dimensions,” so say the ads in excellent promotion. While the run was meant to pique consumer interest for two weeks in advance of June 18th’s Toy Story 3, Disney has extended the run due to the success the films are experiencing. And it’s an experience you should share.

I took in the double feature at Hollywood’s El Capitain, a historic and now Disney-owned theater that hosted the premiere of Citizen Kane way back when in old Hollywood. It’s a beautiful auditorium that has sticky floors and no stadium seating — it’s old-school. But from their home field, Disney definitely plays to the crowd, with Toy Story-themed buckets of popcorn, an organist playing through Disney themes, and a stage show that preceeded the movie where Buzz, Woody and Jessie the Cowgirl all did a little song and dance before confetti spilled into the air and the curtains rose. Sure sets the mood, but these movies don’t need all the sis-boom-bah to be dressed up. They work expertly on their own.

In fact, it wasn’t until Toy Story started that a kid two seats down from me really got excited, interacting with the screen, talking to characters, getting up out of his chair. It wasn’t annoying — it was the joy of film uninhibited by social expectations. I was happy because inside, I was doing the same thing. Turns out the kid was eight…which means he wasn’t alive when Toy Story 2 was out, let alone the first. But he gets it. And nearly 15 years after the fact, these films are proving themselves not just a long-term brand for Disney but multi-generational classics.

Yes, I already said “classic” once. But people say “classic” all the time. No Country For Old Men is a classic. The English Patient is a classic. The yet-to-be-wide-released Paranormal Activity is a classic. We can all say it in the present tense, but the future dictates the truth. The future and eight-year-olds. I say “classic” twice now because that kid proved to me it was true — that it wasn’t just my eyes taking in fond memories — these movies play just as well now and, in their 3D presentation, we’re not just privy to the dimensions we see but to those we can infer. Watching these flicks again, I realized how perfectly plotted, written and executed they are — particularly the first. The brand that Pixar built, we all now know, is not just a style of making movies but a quality of them. Toy Story set the bar high enough that we could be sure a Shark Tale would never come by way of Pixar. It made adult, almost indie elements like those in Up possible. Toy Story is a film about friendship, honor, purpose, disappointment, dedication, disillusionment, fulfillment, and also puns and Don Rickles jokes. For real. Look at it closely. For all the plastic of the heroes and the textured maps of their forms, this is as human a film as there’s ever been.

I’m fond of what Sean Means of the Salt Lake Tribune had to say about this 3D presentation, though: “The revelation is that the movies were 3D to begin with.” How true. From the moment the first teaser played in theaters, when Woody slowly looked over the edge of the bed, panning up Buzz’s sleek, intimidating frame, these films popped off screen and audiences had the same awe Woody did. But in 3D, there is a newness to them, an added excitement to the action, an extra attention to detail. And Pixar wasn’t lazy with the re-release either. New shorts, trivia, and introductions to the films with our favorite characters are included. An early test animation from 1993 shows that Pixar is fallible and makes you nervous for what could have been. Woody is a bit mean-spirited and looks a bit like a corpse; Buzz is a tiny dunce. But as we’ve learned for nearly 15 years now, Pixar manages to get it right. Seeing these movies again in 3D is an exciting, revealing way to see how.

The magic kingdom that was once Mickey’s palace has now become Buzz and Woody’s toy-box, these old friends that are ours now too. There is a bitter-sweetness to watching them now with that eight-year-old, remembering when you were, when you yet hadn’t abandoned your toys. But they still live on in your imagination and through popcorn-buttered fingers adjusting 3D glasses.

What the re-release of the Toy Story movies does, besides effectively making a buck for Disney and promoting the third in the series, is to stare down snarky naysayers. In the beginning of Toy Story, Woody challenges Buzz saying he can’t fly. Blindly, he leaps from the bed to prove himself, as Disney did when they brought on their deal with Pixar, as hundreds of hours of animators at monitors dared to do in the ’90s to make this possible. In 2009, can these films hold up? Can that elusive quality of movie magic still happen in young and old? Are Buzz and Woody still funny? Their adventures still exciting? Can the movies still be a joyful escape? And Buzz lands. “Can.”