Toy Story 2 is 'perfect film'

Buzz Lightyear was one of the stars of Toy Story 2

Animated adventure Toy Story 2 was a success because it employed the "perfect" film formula, according to a movie academic.

A university lecturer has come up with a blueprint for a successful feature film, which must have the right mix of comedy, action and romance.

The perfect film would be made up of: action 30%, comedy 17%, good v evil 13%, love/sex/romance 12%, special effects 10%, plot 10% and music 8%, suggests Sue Clayton, a director and screenwriting lecturer for the University of London and the British Film Council.

The study was based on a cross-section of the most successful films in the UK in the past decade, including Titanic, Die Another Day and Notting Hill.

Toy Story 2, which took £44m at the UK box office in 1999, was deemed to be the closest match to the formula.

Fine balance

Shakespeare in Love, for which Gwyneth Paltrow delivered an emotional Oscar-winning speech, was a close second in the winning formula stakes - but lacked the use of special effects.

Ms Clayton was commissioned by Diet Coke to discover what British audiences wanted from a movie to gauge future sponsorship deals.

"During this project, I was amazed to see how finely balanced the different components of a film need to be in order to achieve perfection," she said.

"Using these elements in the right proportion might just be the difference between making a popular film and one that goes gold at the box office."