Every time Pixar announces another Toy Story, it feels like a high-stakes game of roulette. It’s a game they haven’t missed on, but it’s about the fear of potentially missing just once. Not counting the forgettable Lightyear spin-off, they’ve delivered four great films in a row; the first three are pretty much unassailable masterpieces. I don’t know if Toy Story 5 attains those first films’ unreachable heights, but I can say it’s yet another fantastic addition to a series that has maintained a consistently high level of quality for the past 30 years.
In the two years after Woody’s (Tom Hanks) departure at the end of Toy Story 4, Jessie (Joan Cusack) has emerged as the leader of Bonnie’s collection of toys, with Buzz (Tim Allen) by her side as her loyal and lovestruck deputy. Bonnie still adores her toys and plays with them all the time.
The problem is that the now eight-year-old is struggling to make friends since all the other kids in her neighbourhood have abandoned toys in favour of technology. That same battle comes home when Bonnie’s parents end up buying her a Lilypad tablet (Greta Lee). Sure enough, “Lily” ends up consuming Bonnie’s attention every waking minute, prompting Jessie and her horse Bullseye to find a new, real-life friend for Bonnie.
“In the way that Toy Story 4 provided closure to Woody’s arc, Toy Story 5 provides similar depth for Jessie.”
While the central conflict is the “toys vs. tech” battle, the way writer-director Andrew Stanton and co-writer Kenna Harris approach the subject is much more nuanced than you would think. The film does not completely demonize technology in an “old man yells at cloud” kind of way. Lily is not a one-note villain seeking to destroy the toys, but rather shares their same goal of making Bonnie happy.
It just believes that its approach of flashy mini-games and online friend requests is the more efficient method, one that is repeatedly shown to not be true. Really, the film’s main message is about the importance of children making real-life connections and sharing real-life experiences over merely becoming chronically online. It is a very relevant idea that is important for children growing up in the age of iPads and constant electronic stimuli to hear.
In the way that Toy Story 4 provided closure to Woody’s arc, Toy Story 5 provides similar depth for Jessie. Her shift to the central figure is a great change of pace. She still harbours deep-seated abandonment issues stemming from her original owner Emily, so she is terrified of a potential repeating pattern with Bonnie and the first to wage war against the machine.
“With Toy Story 5 and Hoppers, this is one of Pixar’s strongest outputs in years.”
In fact, there’s a fantastic emotional throughline that builds on the backstory from Toy Story 2, playing a much more significant role than expected, especially when she ends up on another kid’s ranch in the middle act of the film. The film is wise to not completely undercut Toy Story 4’s ending, as Woody only temporarily returns to the group due to a miscommunication earlier in the film. There are some fun old man jokes involving his new “bald spot,” and extra stuffing, but his shift to a supporting one is a necessary one.
Outside of the main plot, there’s an additional narrative thread involving a horde of high-tech, self-activating Buzz Lightyears that for a large part of the movie feels weirdly unrelated to everything else. I feared it would be a retread of the other Buzzes from the second movie. Thankfully, it weaves into the larger story and themes very well, and it gives Tim Allen something fun to do when the main Buzz is not bickering with Woody or pining over Jessie.
Of course, even with that prior emotional throughline, the movie is still a lot of fun. There are these great, highly stylized sequences where kids’ playtime with the toys is displayed as wild genre shifts, like a wedding murder mystery or a spy thriller. It is unfortunate that outside of these sequences, and a few great jokes from Rex (Wallace Shawn), Forky (Tony Hale) and his new wife, the plastic knife Karen Beverly (Melissa Villaseñor), most of the ensemble from the previous movies is mostly sidelined.
That said, there are some great new additions to the cast, most notably Conan O’Brien as the Wi-Fi-enabled potty-training toy Smarty Pants. As someone who mostly gets tired of bathroom jokes, O’Brien’s were some of the funniest I have heard in a while. Smarty is also the leader of a trio of older “tech toys” that Jessie allies with, including hippo GPS Atlas (Craig Robinson) and toy camera Snappy (Shelby Rabara), both of whom are also very fun.
With Toy Story 5 and Hoppers, this is one of Pixar’s strongest outputs in years. It is a shock that a franchise has remained this good for this long, but Toy Story 5 continues to cement the franchise as one of the all-time greats. Like the other films, it is filled to the brim with tons of heart, thrills, laughs and genuine emotion. Will it be the end of the franchise? Probably not. But at this point, I need to remember to stop betting against those toys.
