I grew up watching the first two Toy Story movies.
Despite releasing over a decade later, Toy Story 3 was just as amazing, as was the fourth installment, which released after nearly a decade.
Now, seven years from that, we have Toy Story 5, which thankfully maintains the series’ quality.
For the fifth film, the writers decided to tackle the subject of kids entertaining themselves more with technology than toys.
The movie centers around Jessie (Joan Cusack) this time, who becomes concerned when Bonnie (Scarlett Spears) gets a tablet known as Lilypad (Gretta Lee).
Not only does this risk the toys becoming obsolete, but Jessie also worries that Lilypad could lead Bonnie to the wrong friends.
This makes Toy Story 5 the most topical of the flms, and I love the way the messaging they decided to go with.
Instead of making the technology completely bad, it showed how they could coexist with toys through Jessie’s meeting with a toilet training toy named Smarty Pants (Coan O’Brien).
As for Jessie herself, we get the continuation of her storyline from Toy Story 2, eventually resulting in one of the most moving scenes of the franchise.
But what about Woody (Tom Hanks) and Buzz (Tim Allen), the main characters of the past four films?
Well, Woody had his character arc resolved in Toy Story 4 so he is just here as moral support this time around.
Buzz thankfully gets more to do than he did in the previous film, although the rest of Bonnie’s toys feel more like cameos than anything else.
The movie is most focused around Jessie, the conflict between toys and technology, and a weird side story about some lost Buzz Lightyear toys.
The latter storyline seems to just be there so a part of the third act can work.
That is my only big criticism of Toy Story 5 though.
Along with the great commentary and character arc for Jessie, the animation is fun, the story is charming, and it made me reflect on my own time as a kid.
Five movies in and the Toy Story franchise is still going strong when it comes to quality.
Will there be a sixth one, though?
We shall see.
THE REVIEW MONSTER 