Toys have a finite lifespan. And it seemed like the same was true of the Toy Story franchise, whose third installment brought the saga of Woody (Tom Hanks) and Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) to a pitch-perfectly poignant close.
Nonetheless, the enduring appeal of these beloved characters—and, also, money—motivated Pixar to soldier onward with 2019’s unnecessary if charming Toy Story 4, and now the studio continues expanding its signature tale with the equally unnecessary and charming Toy Story 5.
A cute and funny sequel that treads well-worn territory and yet manages to elicit its fair share of waterworks, it’s not the series’ best but, in most respects, is still better than the rest.
With Woody helping Bo Peep (Annie Potts) find homes for lost toys, Jessie (Joan Cusack) has become the main character in the elaborate games of wedding-themed make-believe orchestrated by her and the rest of the gang’s eight-year-old owner, Bonnie (Scarlett Spears).
Such playtime dramas aren’t totally fanciful, since Buzz is so smitten with Jessie that he plans to ask for her hand in marriage. That proposal, unfortunately, is delayed by more pressing concerns. Namely, that Bonnie is having trouble making new friends, and as her parents soon deduce, some of it has to do with the fact that she’s the only one of her peers who’s not online.
During an impromptu trip outside the confines of Bonnie’s house, Jessie and her trusty steed Bullseye are informed by abandoned playthings that “the age of toys is over” thanks to the ubiquitous digital devices and—as amusingly intoned by a wind-up rabbit—“the tapping!”
This brave new world is an obvious threat to Jessie and her old-school compatriots, and it arrives on their doorstep when Bonnie gets a frog-themed children’s tablet known as a Lilypad (voiced by Past Lives star Greta Lee). Before Jessie can voice her objection to Lily’s presence, the device has connected Bonnie to her dance class members and earned her the sleepover she’s long coveted—a harbinger of a future that resembles Jessie’s past, in which she was abandoned by her original owner, Emily.
To cope with this calamity, Jessie enlists Woody and then tries to get between Bonnie and Lily, believing that true friendship comes from face-to-face interaction and imaginative play. Toy Story 5 thus sets up another crisis for its protagonists, who are forced to reckon with their potential obsolescence.
“Useless” is used as a veritable curse word among the toys, and director Andrew Stanton (working from a screenplay co-written by Kenna Harris) tackles it with the same rambunctious energy, good humor, and existential dread that’s always defined these pioneering films.
The fear of being outdated is accompanied in Toy Story 5 by the terrors of abandonment, loss, mortality, and time’s inexorable forward march and inherent ephemerality. And the film seamlessly weaves those big ideas into a plot that’s rife with energetic chases, covert missions, and races against time. There’s no animated franchise that’s ever plumbed the human condition so deftly, and here, Stanton and Harris address their characters’ complex internal and external circumstances via a natural and cleverly conceived battle between yesterday’s dolls and today’s screen-enabled devices, which eventually include a snarky digital potty trainer named Smarty Pants (Conan O’Brien).
While Woody and Buzz are its classic headliners, it’s Jessie who takes center stage in this odyssey, and Cusack’s vocal performance is a marvelous and moving blend of gee-whiz pluckiness and sorrowful anxiety.
The Toy Story movies have never shied away from confronting the thorny emotions of adolescence and adulthood, and in this outing, Jessie’s quest to find Bonnie companions is at least partially driven by her own need to reassert, and solidify, her relevance in a relationship that’s bound to change and, ultimately, conclude—a fact that, in light of past Woody and Buzz outings, doesn’t feel novel, but still manages on a few occasions to pull at the heartstrings.
Regardless of its narrative and thematic familiarity, there are at least two moments in Toy Story 5 that brought tears to my eyes, and that speaks volumes about Stanton and his Pixar mates’ persistent ability to mine their fantastical conceit for affecting drama.
Not that the film is solely interested in weighty issues. At every turn, it indulges in good-natured goofiness, as with a subplot involving an army of “high-tech” Buzz Lightyear dolls that, upon waking up abandoned on a deserted island, endeavor to reach “Star Command”—which, they ultimately deduce, is directly related to the shiny star sticker worn by Jessie and her deputy Buzz.
Toy Story 5’s fast-paced action centers on Jessie’s attempts to bring Bonnie and Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris) together, the latter a horse-loving girl with an eccentric creative spirit. Amidst all the commotion, Woody is relegated to perfunctory sidekick status, left to suffer a few jokes about his advanced age (courtesy of his blinding bald spot and paunch) and bicker with his historic foil, Buzz. Yet if he and most of his traditional pals (like Rex, Slinky Dog, Mr. Potato Head, and even Forky) get somewhat lost in the shuffle, the film’s collection of new toys is endearing, be it camera Snappy (Shelby Rabara) or GPS hippo Atlas (Craig Robinson).
As in life, there’s nothing scarier in Toy Story 5 than being alone, and Stanton nimbly parallels Jessie and Bonnie’s plight as they seek a sense of belonging and purpose. Ultimately, the film contends that what matters most is not the amount of time we have with loved ones, but the quality of it, since making a lasting impact on others is the entire reason for being, and the pathos of its climax is so overpowering that it compensates for any nagging impression that it’s playing its ancestors’ greatest hits.
This sequel may not leave the sorts of permanent marks that its predecessors did, simply because, for all its wit and style, it’s merely restating things already beautifully said. And there are intermittent instances when, elegance aside, it could have been a bit loopier.
Even so, spending another 102 minutes with these CGI icons is never less than pleasurable, suggesting that though their story has long been complete, they’re anything but obsolete.
