Director: Andrew Stanton
Cast: Joan Cusack, Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Conan O’Brien
Have I Seen It Before: Nope. Life is such at the moment—and shows no sign of changing—that I really got to make a point to see Disney new releases when they come out.
Did I Like It: Yeah…
Yeah. I liked it. I’m pretty sure.
One of these days—and there’s no indication we’ve already lived through that day—we will see our last Toy Story movie. Every entry since the first has felt like the natural end of the series, leaving every entry from Toy Story 3 (2010) having to prove why it would need to exist.
And no one should be embarrassed by their participation in this fifth entry. It gives Jessie (Cusack) a movie to shine in. It explores a theme—the prevalence of tech in the lives of children—that no other movie series could explore in quite the same way. It’s frequently funny.
But it’s our original toys who receive short shrift. There’s an awkward sub-plot (or two, now that I’m thinking about it) that gives Tim Allen’s Buzz Lightyear some things to do, but they feel tacked on. Woody (Hanks) appears in the film because the stockholders meeting after announcing Woody wouldn’t be in the film was not going to go well, and not because he’s needed for the story at hand. In fact, just as soon as Bo Peep (Annie Potts) and crew drop him off to join Jessie’s story, they leave. He doesn’t do much. One wonders how they got Hanks to participate—money, one imagines—and didn’t have to settle for his brother to do the voice. His story ended—and reasonably profoundly—with Toy Story 4 (2019) and bringing him into the proceedings here feels like the same kind of tacked-on afterthought that made Peri Gilpin a de facto cast member of the Frasier reboot.