‘Toy Story 5’ Review: What’s Old Is New Again in This Fun Pixar Sequel
30 years ago, the original Toy Story began with a scene where an old cowboy toy faced off with a sleek space ranger action figure on a young boy’s bed. Three decades years later, Toy Story 5 begins with a similar confrontation. This time, an old cowgirl toy encounters the latest high-tech toy: A touchscreen tablet computer named Lilypad.
The echoes of the first Toy Story are obvious, and layered with meaning that goes way beyond the conflict unfolding onscreen. When the first Toy Story debuted in 1995, it was the first feature-length 3D animated movie, and its creators at Pixar were the hot young upstarts in Hollywood. They were the proverbial Buzz Lightyear taking on the Woody that was traditional hand-drawn animation. Three decades later, the American movie industry — Pixar included — looks increasingly imperiled by a world dominated by smartphones and “content.” Does anyone care about traditional toys (or movies) anymore? When the old cowgirl meets that tablet, it’s like Pixar staring down their own potential obsolescence.
But Pixar isn’t going anywhere as long as they keep producing witty, moving stories like Toy Story 5, which is far better than any fourth sequel about squabbling sentient action figures has any right to be. Although nostalgia for its classic characters is baked right into its perpetual conflict between the old and the new, Toy Story 5 tells a pointedly timely story about our society’s relationship with technology — one that’s not quite as simplistic as it might appear in the film’s marketing.
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The trailers sell Toy Story 5 as a straightroward tale of toys versus tech. Stalwart playthings Jessie (Joan Cusack) and Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) lose their place of honor in the heart of their shy eight-year-old owner Bonnie (Scarlett Spears) after she gets her first introduction to the world of “devices” via that adorable and highly addictive tablet Lilypad (Greta Lee). Bonnie’s parents buy her a device hoping it will help get over her anxiety around meeting other kids. Instead, it turns her into a screen zombie, and the only other girls she meets are other zombified children. (Parents — and by parents, I mean me — navigating the world of technology with their own kids will recognize Bonnie’s dead-eyed stare at Lilypad all too well.)
Bonnie’s tablet addiction marks a return to familiar thematic territory for Toy Story 5 co-writer and co-director Andrew Stanton, whose previous Pixar triumphs include WALL-E, another movie about a collision between technological generations set in a world where humanity is so enraptured by shiny gadgets that they risk missing the beauty all around them. Lucky for Bonnie, she still has toys like Jessie, who cares so deeply for her owner that she risks getting lost to trail her to an all-important sleepover with her new Lilypad friends.
This is a very clever concept for a sequel in a franchise whose theme song is Randy Newman’s “You’ve Got a Friend In Me.” Jessie’s quest to save Bonnie from Lilypad’s poisonous influence sparks a multi-layered chase and rescue plot, one that involves the return of toy sheriff Woody (Tom Hanks), who left Bonnie’s brood at the end of Toy Story 4 to pursue a life helping lost toys with his brave pal Bo Peep (Annie Potts). Woody returns to help Buzz defeat Lilypad, while Jessie trails Bonnie, and then meets a whole new crew of other battery-powered toy devices.
That includes Toy Story 5’s unquestioned scene-stealing star Smarty Pants, a gadget designed to help toddlers with potty training. A button-masher handheld electronic game sounds like a terrible idea for a two year old — which is precisely the point of including him in this film about the dangers of introducing children to technology at such an impressionable age. But then Smarty Pants, voiced in exuberant fashion by Conan O’Brien, turns out to be a total charmer. He slurs his speech like a drunk when his batteries are low, and occasionally reacts to Jessie’s insults with the potty mouth you would expect from a toy shaped like a roll of toilet paper.
Smart Pants injects a ton of energy and humor into Jessie’s storyline, and brings so much to the film as a whole that you’re a little less sad about the fact that the franchise’s cast has now grown so large that there’s hardly any room in Toy Story 5 for longtime favorites like Rex (Wallace Shawn), Hamm (John Ratzenberger), and Mr. Potato Head (Jeff Bergman, replacing the late Don Rickles).
The relatively limited roles for characters like Slinky Dog (Blake Clark), Duke Caboom (Keanu Reeves) and even Forky (Tony Hale) is felt most strongly in Toy Story 5’s chaotic first act, which includes a cold open that becomes a running subplot throughout the entire film about a shipping container full of upgraded Buzz Lightyear action figures that wash up on a deserted island. But then the battle between Jessie and Lilypad starts to come into clearer focus — and Jessie’s time with Smarty Pants and his other gadget pals complicates what was shaping up to be a scolding lecture about smart devices invading our world.
As you might have guessed by the sheer number of times her name’s come up in this review, Jessie really is the central character in Toy Story 5, and Cusack delivers her finest vocal work in the series to date. Although this franchise is jammed with hilarious gags and exciting adventures, the toys themselves are really tragic figures; doomed to be discarded or forgotten over and over again — or worse, buried in a backyard or lost on a rooftop. Jessie’s heart has been broken multiple times in the past, and her trauma over losing her very first owner becomes an undercurrent throughout Toy Story 5, leading to one scene as emotionally devastating as any in the entire series. (And, yes, given how often this series goes for viewers’ emotional jugular, that’s really saying something.)
I would say Toy Story 5 is shockingly successful, but really it shouldn’t be shocking at all that Andrew Stanton, the director of Pixar masterpieces like Finding Nemo and WALL-E and a writer of the Toy Story films since the very first one, understands these characters and this world, and found a way to bring them into the 2020s without sacrificing what makes them special. Nor should it be a surprise that 30 years after its first breakthrough, Pixar continues to adapt to a changing world. When Jessie proves that old things still have their place, she’s not just talking about Woody and herself. She’s talking about the place that made them too.
Additional Thoughts:
-I want to know what brand of spork Bonnie made Forky out of. Two or three years after she made him (and his beloved, Karen Beverly) they still look great. Not a crack in sight! My children would have broken his arms and lost one of his eyes inside of a week.
RATING: 8/10
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