10/12 ForReel Score | 4/5 Stars

The original Toy Story came out four days before I was born. I am bound by blood to every inhabitant of Andy’s room. Those VHS tapes played endlessly as my love for film and sense of humor developed. They practically trained me to watch movies. Toy Story 3 came out the week I graduated middle school, acting as a bittersweet coda for my childhood years. Woody, Buzz and company remained a fond memory through high school and college. The trilogy became a universal way to connect with new friends about something we loved passionately as kids.

Toy Story 4, which I now realize is just as mature and well crafted as the previous 3, did not hit for me in 2019. I somehow expected it to carry the same meaning for adult me and instead it was just a movie. With Toy Story 5, that inevitability transitions from a bug to a feature. This entry tackles the oppressive integration of tech into the lives of today’s children. Parents put tablets in children’s hands to keep them perpetually occupied. That may make their lives easier, but the childlike whimsy and imagination is stomped out in favor of adjusting to a decidedly adult way of taking in the world and communicating. And yet - this beloved gang of toys resiliently find their place in a world determined to make them obsolete. Toy Story has gone from a millennial childhood staple to a life affirming saga that has cemented a unique creative voice for a second era of storytelling with this fifth entry.

We begin with young Bonnie (Scarlett Spears) receiving a Lilly Pad Tablet (Greta Lee) from her parents. She’s still obsessed with Sheriff Jessie (Joan Cusack), Buzz (Tim Allen) and the rest of her toys but also yearns to become friends with the mean girls from her dance class who are all in a Lilly Pad group chat. She becomes glued to Lilly Pad and Jessie desperately contacts the now liberated Woody (Tom Hanks) to help her keep Bonnie’s love and attention. Woody confirms that this tech obsession has taken over the lives of all children. Toys may end up being adrift forever. Jessie and Bullseye then follow Bonnie to a sleepover at which she is laughed at by her gremlin wannabe friends. Unsure where Bonnie’s ineffectual father will take them after they’re shoved back in the car, they escape and are found by an old couple who find Jessie’s old address written on her outfit. This is the former home of Emily, the little girl who broke Jessie’s heart by giving her away all those years ago. There, Jessie and Bullseye encounter the childhood toys of Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris), a kind and imaginative eight-year-old girl who Jessie immediately wants Bonnie to connect with, if they can get back to her.

Joan Cusack has always done fantastic and emotive work as Jessie and relishes the opportunity to drive the story. Her motivations are quite different than Woody, who was always driven by personally being close to Andy. Jessie understands and accepts that Bonnie will grow up, she just believes with all her heart that the tablet is not the path to the happiest life a child can have. This selflessness gives us a film less driven by shenanigans and comedy than previous installments. It doesn’t save its’ emotional punch for the third act (although that segment does feature a deeply satisfying reveal). We’re just as filled with fear and sadness for Bonnie as Jessie is. It’s one of the most high stakes stories in the franchise.

Since the original Andy gang spends most of the film in a box, Woody and Buzz become the comic relief who have to face off against Lilly Pad. The amphibious tablet is not entirely portrayed as a villain. Greta Lee’s bubbly delivery conveys that in her own twisted way, Lilly Pad genuinely cares about Bonnie’s life. It’s just a care strictly rooted in social currency. This dynamic along with some one-on-one bickering between sheriff and space ranger is the comedic engine of a film less concerned with being funny. As such, most of the jokes are not as sharp as the ones in the previous films, but they’re silly fun on their own terms. Hanks and Allen bring a less self important energy to their voice work that actually ends up refreshing their characters a bit. Buzz in particular is mostly driven by his newly affirmed romantic love for Jessie and Woody can barely disguise how delighted that makes him. We get everything we love about their dynamic but it doesn’t overtake the story.

I’m a bit less fond of the more analog tech toys that Jessie and Bullseye find themselves dealing with at Blaze’s house. Conan O’Brien is doing a lot of hooting and hollering as a toilet training device who attempts to overtake every scene he’s in. Small camera Snappy (Shelby Rabara) and hippo shaped GPS Atlas (Craig Robinson) are less oppressive but never really find their personalities. They mostly just exist to symbolize that technological advancements can be helpful as long as your existence isn’t entirely centered around them. It’s cute and clever that each of them represents a separate feature of a phone or tablet, but I’m not itching to see them again in future installments.

As Taylor Swift’s lovely and wistful “I Knew It, I Knew You” plays over the credits, it cements that this new trilogy will be just as precious to today’s kids as the original trilogy was to their parents. Perhaps even more so, since this is now a beloved longform tale that is being passed down to them as opposed to a distraction that boomers and gen x’ers half heartedly embraced. Seeing one of these may not be a transcendent experience for me anymore but when we do arrive at Toy Story 6, I will not be repeating the “do we really have to do this” song and dance that precedes every new release in this franchise. Pixar has proven that they approach the story that shaped them with the utmost care. After all, as long as these toys can find a place in this world, so can we.

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