(FORTUNE Magazine) – As expected, animation mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg was nowhere to be found when Michael Eisner pitched a tent in the middle of New York's Central Park recently to give the entertainment press a sneak peek at Walt Disney's next two animated feature films, Pocahontas and Toy Story. But there was another celebrity executive--new to the Hollywood scene--on hand for the event: Steve Jobs, father of Apple Computer.

Jobs was there as a proud parent of Toy Story, an animated feature film made in partnership with Disney by Pixar, the digital filmmaking company Jobs bought in 1986 from Star Wars creator George Lucas.

"I'm really very excited about this," Jobs said before the screening, conceding a bit of nervousness. While Pixar has created several shorts, Toy Story is its first full-length flick--the company is writing, producing, and directing the movie as part of a three-picture deal with Disney. That makes Jobs a full-fledged movie guy, even though he still spends more than half his time in Silicon Valley as CEO of Next Computer, the object-oriented software company.

After a showing of Pocahontas, a typical Disney animated feature, the lights dimmed anew for the silver-screen work of the onetime computer wunderkind. It is, as the name implies, the story of some toys, specifically a cowboy doll voiced by Tom Hanks and a space ranger voiced by Tim Allen--with comic relief provided by the like of Don Rickles as Mr. Potato head and Annie Potts as Little Miss Muffett.

The hardened show-biz press seemed to love it, with several predicting the movie could be a big sleeper. While we can't say if the story holds up or if your kids will love it, we can say that it's unlike any movie you've seen before. The computer-generated characters are animated, but like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park or the prehistoric animals in The Flintstones, they are 3-D and move in a fluid, natural way.

Afterward, Jobs seemed right at home in the Hollywood milieu. "This is going to be big," he said. "Really big."

- John Huey