But how necessary was this sequel? And how can the brain trust at Pixar successfully pull these toys out of the attic again? To find out, I took both my film critic hat and my kids (7 and 11) to a press screening of Toy Story 5.<\/p>\n
Right off the bat I can say that the movie does Pixar proud in the visual department. It isn\u2019t quite the revolutionary jump in graphics that Toy Story 4<\/a> had over its predecessors, but the usual Pixar bump is there. In fact one scene that starts with an establishing shot of the sky and trees and a school bus had me thinking for a split second that they’d actually shot some real footage for the film before kids from the uncanny valley came running into frame.<\/p>\n My son had a quote about that as well\u2026 \u201cbetter grafics.” He almost got it. To be fair, he took my notebook in the middle of the theater and wrote it in the dark, so there\u2019s a chance he knows how to spell it right.<\/p>\n My kids were very excited to tag along to this press screening, but less so when I started asking them questions on the ride home. My daughter, who just finished fifth grade, said it was starting to feel like homework, and I had to remind her that this was, in fact, my job and yeah, it\u2019s a little like homework.<\/p>\n For starters, it\u2019s difficult to talk about Toy Story 5 without a heavy dose of context for the entire franchise<\/a>. Obviously it\u2019s a sequel and there are four movies worth of story to keep in mind, but more than that this is a franchise that has had two separate occasions to wrap up in a pretty satisfying way. There are crowds of people who would agree it should have just been a trilogy<\/a>, ending on Bonnie\u2019s porch at the end of Toy Story 3<\/a>. And while Toy Story 4 started the conversation of \u201cwhy are we still doing this\u201d for some, it defied the odds and put a decently neat bow on the franchise again, and with even more finality.<\/p>\n ‘Why do we need a Toy Story 5?’ is a bigger question than ever.\u201c<\/p>\n So \u201cwhy do we need a Toy Story 5?\u201d is a bigger question here than it has been even for other long-running franchises. That is, fair or not, the hole that this movie was starting in for me. For my kids, though? Not so much. In fact, their least favorite entry in the franchise is the widely beloved Toy Story 3<\/a>. But my daughter had a very interesting reason for that \u2013 one that leads me back into this review proper.<\/p>\n First and foremost, a Toy Story movie, and I would argue a Pixar film in general, needs to be fun, and Toy Story 5 certainly trots out some fun moments. The animation style of Bonnie\u2019s imagination and the scenarios she concocts while playing with her favorite toys is maybe the strongest of any such sequence in the whole series. And from a battalion of stranded next-gen Buzz Lightyears trying to find their way back to Star Command to forgotten toys wasted in the wake of tech, there are plenty of memorable laughs. Conan O\u2019Brien in particular is hilarious as Mr. Smarty Pants<\/a>, a potty-training assistant.<\/p>\n In fact, the trio of new characters \u2013 including Smarty Pants, the kids-first digital camera Snappy, and Atlas, a map device that\u2019s, for some reason, a hippo \u2013 were my daughter\u2019s favorite characters in the entire movie, and I can\u2019t really argue with that. They\u2019re a blast. (They also do one of my favorite Toy Story things, which is questioning their own existence in a legitimately terrifying way.)<\/p>\n However, on the balance this movie may be more of a downer than it was fun. There\u2019s a maudlin sense of dread that hangs over most of the first half of the movie, where a real sadness revolves around Bonnie and her inability to make friends that can meet her where she\u2019s at. Now, this was something that my daughter and I had an interesting conversation about. After Bonnie\u2019s parents get her Lillypad (Greta Lee), her first tablet nervously purchased as a way to help her connect with all the other kids in her orbit who already have one, Bonnie\u2019s online dynamic in a chat group goes pretty immediately bad. My kid and I talked about who was to blame for it \u2013 the bullies who were being mean, or Lillypad, who served as an easy conduit, providing access to Bonnie for the bullies. She actually blamed Lillypad, saying, \u201cIt\u2019s important to know who good people are in real life.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s wisdom beyond her 11 years in that, and I\u2019m proud of her, but also she agreed it was the iPad\u2019s fault, so joke\u2019s on her \u2013 she\u2019s getting less screen time from now on. Meanwhile, my 7-year-old son said, \u201cI like how the tech took over,\u201d <\/a>so\u2026 I guess for sure less screentime for him too.<\/p>\n And, to finally get back to my daughter\u2019s point, the other thing a Toy Story movie needs is a good villain. To quote her thoughts on Toy Story 3\u2026 \u201cI hated that the villain was just evil the whole time.\u201d I thought that was an interesting take because Lillypad, for her part, is doing what she thinks is best for Bonnie which, based on the conversation my daughter and I had, makes placing the \u201cvillain\u201d label on her a little more difficult. She\u2019s a stand-in for the idea of technology causing kids to grow up too fast, not necessarily the antagonist in and of herself.<\/p>\n Now, I think that\u2019s in the Pro column for this movie, as some of the franchise’s best moments are from villains who see the error of their ways and are big enough to pivot. I would argue Tom Hanks\u2019 Woody<\/a> actually represents the best version of that in the original Toy Story because he was straight-up the bad guy of that movie, but that\u2019s probably a different article.<\/p>\n Toy Story 5 Images Toy Story films also need a relatable phase of life at their center \u2013 something universally experienced, like growing up, leaving home or letting go. These are all things just about everybody can relate to without any extra direction from the filmmakers, and Toy Story 5, for at least the first half, is very much missing that universality. Growing up with social media is a modern and I suppose widely relatable experience that wasn\u2019t around 30 years ago when the first Toy Story came out<\/a>. But instead of being about \u201cremember how it can be difficult to be a kid?\u201d, a lot of Toy Story 5 is more focused on \u201ckids these days and their screens, amirite?\u201d The difference there is that Toy Story 5\u2019s statement feels like it\u2019s the filmmakers\u2019 telling us about it instead of letting us get there emotionally ourselves. The result is an out of touch-ness that is, quite frankly, surprising to see from Pixar. For a lot of the film\u2019s runtime Toy Story, very uncharacteristically, doesn\u2019t have much to offer to the conversation about young people\u2019s relationship to their screens and there\u2019s not a lot of the real emotional stakes this series has been trading in for four movies prior to this.<\/p>\n To be fair it doesn\u2019t let parents off the hook either. As a remote worker myself, I felt properly seen and criticized by a scene where a parent is just shouting \u201cyou\u2019re muted\u201d while parked in his home office on zoom. It\u2019s difficult though to take the critique too seriously coming from Pixar, a company sprung from the same Steve Jobs that brought us the iPad in the first place. But that also might just be me being defensive. But I followed up about this scene with my kids and if it reminded them of me, to which my son said \u201coh 100% totally. It wasn\u2019t funny because it was work.\u201d So the movie does have its finger on the pulse of human connectivity in, lo, these modern times to some extent.<\/p>\n This movie did not need Woody.\u201c<\/p>\n I know I\u2019ve been more negative than not about this movie for like 1500 words now, but really the second half of Toy Story 5 is much better. A lot of what I like about it and how the movie lands gets into some spoiler territory, so it\u2019s just harder to get into detail about it. Before I attempt to though, I feel like I have to call out everybody\u2019s favorite cowboy. This movie did not need Woody. It\u2019s a testament to the job the franchise has done of ending in a satisfying way twice now that he feels so tacked on in this one. In fact, it\u2019s enough to make me wonder if he wasn\u2019t even in the early drafts of the movie, until an exec got hold of it and said, \u201cput the cowboy in, you maniacs.\u201d<\/p>\n You could lift Woody straight out of the movie and there would only be two differences. Number 1, the movie would be maybe two minutes shorter. He\u2019s got no business to do off on his own that affects the plot in any meaningful way. And number 2, it would actually help out Buzz (Tim Allen). This movie wants so badly to be a two-hander between Buzz and Jessie (Joan Cusack), and it almost pulls it off. But when Woody comes back and starts hatching plans, it takes away Buzz\u2019s agency. Buzz could\u2019ve taken a next step into responsibility, adulthood, leadership, whatever box needed to be ticked for one of those universally relatable life phases that Toy Story has always hung its hat on. Instead, he just kinda keeps following orders and it feels like an opportunity was missed in favor of rehashing some of his and Woody\u2019s old dynamic.<\/p>\n Now, again, pretty much all of my issues with this film are in its first half, but I think that\u2019s also in part because I was dreading how they were going to attempt to stick the landing. But happily, the second half of the movie manages it a lot better than I\u2019d feared.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n