We can only say goodbye to Toy Story so many times before it starts to get a little absurd. The series first ended in 2010 with Toy Story 3, as Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), et al waved their beloved owner Andy off to college and prepared for a new life with his young neighbour Bonnie.
Then it ended again with Toy Story 4 (2019), an existential, pseudo-epilogue about making peace with life’s many endings, as Woody and Bo Peep (Annie Potts) retired from the toy life to take a shot out in the wilderness. Yet somehow, the pair turn up back at Bonnie’s bedroom window in Toy Story 5. Scratch that personal growth. There’s more money to be made.
This one is certainly topical. It tackles the impact of technology on children’s imaginative play, and arrives in the same week that the UK government has announced an impending social media ban for under-16’s. Parents will likely have thoughts about some of the lines of dialogue here, such as when one pirate figurine mournfully proclaims, “the age of toys is over… once tech invades your home, you’re dead where you lie”.
But while this is topical, there does come a point in any franchise where the natural momentum dies. And, while director Andrew Stanton and co-director Kenna Harris, both credited here as writers, can still mine wit and imagination from Pixar’s first and most eternally loveable creations, what used to pack an emotional punch here manages but a light slap. It’s a perfectly lovely film. It’s also the worst in the series.
Toy Story 4 came with an apology for its historical lack of feminine presence by dropping its fluttery eyed love interest Bo Peep into trousers and action girl poses. She’s (of course) shoved into the background once more in 5, while the sequel takes the more obvious (yet welcome) route of turning its focus on the hootin’ and hollerin’ cowgirl Jessie, who’s always felt like the more neglected character purely because of the 500-pound charm bomb that detonates on screen every time Joan Cusack opens her mouth.
Stanton and Harris have exploited their audience’s Pavlovian response to Sarah McLachlan’s “When She Loved Me” from Toy Story 2 – so devastating that Taylor Swift’s credit song for 5 doesn’t even bother with emotionality, keeping it cute instead – and returned to the site of Jessie’s trauma, her sudden abandonment by her first owner Emily.
But we’ve already watched Jessie and then Woody learn to live on, and 5’s attempt to achieve unnecessary emotional closure ends with a reveal that only becomes more ludicrous with every second spent thinking about it. And the narrative circumstances needed to whisk Jessie and her trusty steed Bullseye away from Bonnie’s bedroom back to the farmhouse where Emily once lived – now home to a girl named Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris) and her pet pig Jimmy Dean – calls into question how many times Pixar plans to spirit these toys away from their owners and trigger a mass-effort rescue mission.
Really, the defining feature of 5 is a talking tablet (Greta Lee’s Lily), which Bonnie’s parents buy her, having grown concerned by her social struggles. Superficially, at least, the Lilypad tablet allows her to build a network of friends. Here, Stanton and Harris allow Jessie to vocalise many a parent’s fears. But considering Pixar was founded on the shift between hand-drawn and computer animation, the studio naturally holds back from portraying Lily as an all-out villain – more a misguided soul, merely concerned with what’s best for Bonnie.
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But the film fails to drum up any kind of meaningful conclusion on the matter, even if it’s a nuanced one. It’s too quickly distracted by a trio of Blaze’s weirdly niche, defunct gadgets: a digital potty trainer (Conan O’Brien), a GPS hippo (Craig Robinson), and a toy camera (Shelby Rabara). O’Brien at least exploits his character’s comic potential, and there’s a funny stretch where a low battery is depicted as drunken stupor. There’s a squad of high-tech Buzz Lightyears, too, that wash up onshore.
All of these additions have their moments, and the film has particular fun jumping into Bonnie and Blaze’s imaginations, but it’s hard to say what they could possibly add to the discourse around childhood development and AI – beyond, I don’t know, be nice to your old computers, they might have souls, too? With Toy Story 5, Pixar’s 30-year-old franchise has finally started to show its age.
Dir: Andrew Stanton. Starring: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Greta Lee, Conan O’Brien, Tony Hale, Craig Robinson, Shelby Rabara, Scarlett Spears, Mykal-Michelle Harris. Cert PG, 102 minutes.
‘Toy Story 5’ is in cinemas from 18 June
