My wife and I went to see the movie Toy Story 5 on a weekday afternoon at the Spectrum 8 in Albany because I had to. I’ve seen Toy Story (1995) and Toy Story 2 (1999) in the cinema well before we had a child. When we watched the third film (2010), we didn’t take the kid. For the fourth (2019), the three of us all saw it at the movies, but not together. I even saw a couple of TV specials, Toy Story of Terror! (2013) and Toy Story That Time Forgot (2014). But I never saw the Lightyear (2022) movie.
So I guess I’m as invested in the TS universe as others are in the ones for Star Wars, Marvel Cinematic, or LEGO.
Bonnie, the eight-year-old who inherited Andy’s toys in TS4, is rather content with playtime, which is represented wonderfully in a handmade-looking style. But her parents are concerned. They buy her a new smart tablet, Lilypad, so Bonnie can chat with her dance class members. Has Bonnie outgrown her toys?
On the outskirts of town, Blaze, a nine-and-a-half-year-old, loves animals: a horse, Daffodil, and the family pig, Jimmy Dean. (The name cracked me up.) She has a display of her model horse collection in her room and still enjoys playtime occasionally.
Sheriff Jessie and the other toys, including her deputy, Buzz Lightyear, worry that Lilypad will usurp Bonnie’s attention. The action goes from there, including the return of Woody. A unit of high-tech Buzz Lightyear toys crash-lands on a deserted island, and they too end up in the main plotline.
The cowgirl
This is very much a Jessie story. There’s a brief reprise of When She Loved Me from Toy Story 2 early on, which was a hint for me. How much has the cowgirl mattered over the years?
At the same time, the movie seemed to be set up to bash online technology, yet in the end found a place for it.
Rotten Tomatoes gave Toy Story 5 a 92% (critics)/94% (fans) positive rating. It “largely sidesteps franchise fatigue” through its redirected focus. We liked it a lot, and even got a little, er, emotional. Aside from the core characters, most of the TS tribe was underutilized, but it would have made the story too bloated.
It was strange, though. There was a father and child in the theater, but they left early on, leaving us to see the film by ourselves, which was too bad; I like getting audience reaction.