Toy Story 5: Absolutely perfect

Toy Story 5 (2026) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five); rated PG, for mild rude humor

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.21.26

The Toy Story franchise has been a marvel since the first film’s 1995 debut.

 

This fifth entry is the best thus far: a bold statement, considering the quality, imagination, voice talent, carefully sculpted characters, sentimentality and heart that long have been this series’ hallmark.

 

When an angry Jessie insists that newcomer Lilypad is useless with respect to helping
Bonnie make new friends, the quick-thinking tablet briskly signs up the little girl with
three schoolmates ... in a chat room.

Ah, but this one adds an oh-so-timely new element: topicality.

Andrew Stanton and McKenna Harris, sharing writing and directing chores, have challenged these beloved characters with an existential threat: impending irrelevance, due to the competitive, soul-sucking arrival of (gasp, shudder) screens.

 

Woody, Buzz, Jessie and all the other toys have long cherished their crucial role in helping young owners nurture their imaginations, while also shaping their social skills. When one owner successfully “grows up,” the toys are passed along to another, as when college-bound Andy lovingly introduced his toy friends to young Bonnie, at the end of Toy Story 3.

 

But the increasingly ubiquitous tablets threaten to break that chain, which our heroes aren’t about to tolerate. They’ve no desire to mimic Puff the Magic Dragon, who “sadly slipped into his cave.”

 

Although this story gives everybody plenty of screen time, Jessie is the focus. Cusack deftly conveys this character’s huge emotional arc.

 

That said, this film opens on a disorienting and unexpected note. Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Tim Allen) wakens in a strange place, during a dark and stormy night. Waves crash on a debris-strewn beach. He spots a huge, damaged container several yards away, apparently having fallen off a passing ship. 

 

Peering inside, he spots 49 more Buzz Lightyears. He activates them; they assemble en masse to scout the island. Sharp-eyed viewers might notice a fleeting glimpse of their spacesuit decals: “Hi-Tech Edition.”

 

(Hold that thought.)

 

Uncertain of their location, unsure of what to do, they equate a blazing star in the nighttime sky with their venerable “Star Command” ... and, hastily assembling a raft, set off to reach it.

 

Meanwhile...

 

Bonnie (Scarlett Spears) happily plays with her toys, putting them through adventures that (for the first time) we “see” through her imaginative eyes. The visual style of these playtime sequences are wholly different: a pastel, tactile, chalk-drawing technique that evokes animated child’s drawings. The impact is sweet, vibrant and mirthfully silly.

 

This gaggle of toys, led by Jessie and Buzz, includes her faithful horse Bullseye, Rex (Wallace Shawn), Mr. Potato Head (Jeff Bergman), Slinky Dog (Blake Clark), Forky (Tony Hale) and many other familiar faces.

 

Woody (Tom Hanks), Bo Peep (Annie Potts) and Combat Carl (Ernie Hudson) are elsewhere at the moment.

 

Toy Story 4: Shopworn

Toy Story 4 (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated G, despite some scary sequences
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.21.19

The familiar faces are as welcome as longtime friends; the new characters are both adorable and — in some cases — shiveringly disturbing; the dialog remains witty and funny; the incidental encounters are amusing, clever and well-paced; the voice talent is as sharp as ever.

Bo Peep, aware of the dangers awaiting those who unwisely venture into the antique
store's main aisles, carefully leads her friends — Buzz Lightyear, Woody, Bunny, Ducky
and (on her shoulder) Giggle McDimples — behind dusty cabinets, as they try to rescue
a captured comrade.

But the driving plotline for Toy Story 4 — arguably, the reason for the film’s existence — isn’t nearly as satisfying as those of its predecessors. It feels contrived, rather than organic. The whole remains less than the sum of its well-crafted parts.

One can’t help feeling that this is a case of Slinky Dog’s tail wagging the rest of its body: a film dictated more by crass commerce than artistic justification.

2010’s Toy Story 3 gave the franchise a warm sense of closure, with now-grown Andy passing his beloved plaything companions to preschool-age Bonnie. As we’ve constantly been reminded, a toy’s noblest endeavor is to bring comfort and enchantment to an imaginative child: a mission that cannot be accomplished if tucked into a box that gets stored in an attic, like Puff the Magic Dragon sadly slipping into his cave.

Toy Story 4 similarly concludes with a different sort of torch-passing, which — depending on one’s emotional involvement with these characters — will prompt tears, bewilderment, snorts of displeasure, or a feeling of outright betrayal.

Full disclosure: I don’t approve of what scripters Andrew Stanton and Stephany Folsom — working from a story by eight (!) credited writers, including John Lasseter and Rashida Jones — have wrought.

But that comes much later.

The film begins with a prologue dating back to Andy’s era, which explains why Bo Peep (voiced by Annie Potts) was MIA in Toy Story 3. She, her three sheep — Billy, Goat and Gruff — and matching lamp were tumbled into a box with other items to be donated elsewhere, much to the dismay of Woody (Tom Hanks). Turns out he’s long nurtured a crush for Bo Peep, likely to the surprise of those who figured he and feisty Jessie (Joan Cusack) were an unspoken item.

Back in the present day, Woody is enduring insult on top of injury, since little Bonnie prefers to pin his sheriff’s badge on Jessie. Woody, in turn, has been relegated to the back reaches of a closet laden with other neglected toys: among them Melephant Brooks (Mel Brooks), Carl Reineroceros (Carl Reiner) and Chairol Burnett (Carol Burnett).

That’s a cute bit of stunt casting, but their appearances are so brief, you’ll scarcely notice.

Toy Story 3: All Growed Up

Toy Story 3 (2010) • View trailer for Toy Story 3
4.5 stars (out of five). Rating: G, and perhaps too generously, for quite scary moments and heart-stopping suspense
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.18.10
Buy DVD: Toy Story 3 • Buy Blu-Ray: Toy Story 3 [Blu-ray]

To this day, I can't listen to Peter, Paul and Mary's 1963 recording of "Puff, the Magic Dragon" without getting an ache in my gut, and the patiently calm, sentient teddy bear in Steven Spielberg's A.I. tore me to shreds.

The notion of abandoned "toys with souls" as a metaphor for growing up is more than I can stand. Only a wretchedly cruel world would demand that children surrender their innocence and sense of wonder, as a "necessary" step toward maturity and adulthood.

Woody, far left, is surprised to learn that all the other toys -- from left, Mr.
Potato Head, Slinky Dog, Bullseye, Mrs. Potato Head, Rex, Hamm, Jessie,
the Aliens and Buzz Lightyear -- would rather be sent to Sunnyside Daycare,
than wait in the attic of the only home they've known, for the time when the
college-bound Andy one day might need them again.

Imagine my chagrin, then, to discover that this message is front and center in Toy Story 3.

Ah, but trust Pixar to soften this subtext with the studio's trusted, impeccable mix of solid storytelling, spot-on character voices, bursts of wicked humor and a growing level of tension and suspense that climaxes with a heart-thumping third act.

Granted, these characters have lost a bit of their freshness; and yes, many of the new toy co-stars feel overmuch like deliberate product placement, much the way George Lucas let the commercial tail wag his artistic dog, when he added those cuddly Ewoks to his third Star Wars film.

But that's small stuff: There's also a lot to be said for simply seeing Woody and Buzz together again, and for hearing the wonderfully familiar strains of Randy Newman's "You've Got a Friend in Me" in the soundtrack of this third toy-centered adventure.

But goodness: If you thought that nasty neighbor kid Sid was menacing in 1995's original Toy Story, you're likely to choke on your Jujubes after meeting the cymbal-smashing monkey in this story.

Indeed, it could be argued that this film is much too scary for the youngest members of its target audience. I'm all for stories with teeth; those grim Grimm's fairy tales demonstrate the necessary truth that heroic redemption means little without some adversity along the way. But writers John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich and Michael Arndt skipped teeth and went straight for fangs; they've really ladled on the terror, which builds to a wide-eyed, chest-clutching, gasping-for-breath finale.

The monkey's bad enough; the deceptively serene "Big Baby" will revive all those doll nightmares we had back in the day, thanks to Twilight Zone episodes such as the one involving the homicidal "Talking Tina." Brrrrrrr!