Film Reviews

June 19, 2026

There was a time when a new "Toy Story" movie was worth all the buzz (pun intended). After all, Disney-Pixar's beloved original franchise (and major cash cow) had consistently given audiences an adventure they'd never quite seen before, and we enthusiastically responded to the ingenuity of each story, its cultural and coming-of-age insights, and the humor and emotion surrounding the underlying notion that toys are alive and possess their own personalities.

But if "Toy Story 4" (which was alleged to be the final in the series) showed faint writing on the wall that perhaps this longstanding property was running out of steam, "Toy Story 5" unfortunately makes it clearer. It's ironic, too, because the plot centers around our toy heroes fighting the urge to let technology do all of our work for us, and yet the movie itself, by recycling many of its predecessors' themes and storylines, does a lot of our thinking for us. We end up watching "Toy Story 5" somewhat passively as it goes through its motions, and this leaves us disengaged and, surprisingly, sometimes bored.

One of the hallmarks of the "Toy Story" movies, over the course of the franchise's decades-long run, has been their ability to adapt to the changing times, and indeed the movies have leaned into the inevitability that times and people change. Director Andrew Stanton and co-director McKenna Harris' screenplay for "Toy Story 5" continues this trend. However, the filmmakers give themselves and their legacy characters, including Woody (voice of Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), and Jessie (Joan Cusack), somewhat easy targets to tackle: tech and social media, and their harmful effects (bullying, FOMO, etc.) on kids.

While we give Stanton and Harris credit for delving into an issue that is important and topical, it's also obvious. Granted, most movies about the perils of mobile devices and social media platforms have been geared toward adults, but there were hints of them in Disney-Pixar's own "Inside Out," and nevertheless, it seems we've been down this road before. Plus, the movie's other conflicts and overall message were presented in previous "Toy Story" outings, just in different forms, and so we can't quite shake the sense that Stanton and company may have struggled to come up with fresh ideas.

In the film, we catch up with eight-year-old Bonnie (Scarlett Spears), the latest owner of our "Toy Story" friends. Bonnie has a healthy imagination but she's also friendless. She yearns to play with the kids next door, but they laugh at her mechanical, tactile toys. Meanwhile, they waste their day away on tablets and conversing with their virtual friends via "The Pond," an online chat environment. Alas, Bonnie's parents cave and buy her a tablet of her own—the frog-shaped Lilypad (Greta Lee), who turns her nose up, so to speak, at all the non-Wi-Fi toys in Bonnie's collection (Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, Slinky Dog, Rex, etc.) and promptly displays her computing prowess and addictive qualities when Bonnie starts burying her nose into Lilypad's screen, quickly becoming a lethargic recluse.

Determined to save her kid from a life of depression and listlessness, Jessie and her trusted horse Bullseye embark on a mission to get Bonnie a living, breathing, human friend. Of course, this being a "Toy Story" movie, the toys' operation takes a lot of turns and ends up being not so straightforward. As we might expect, the characters get picked up and inspected by various humans, transported to faraway locales, trapped in tight spaces, etc., all while encountering a host of new toys and learning valuable lessons along the way.

Among the colorful newcomers are Smarty Pants (Conan O'Brien), a battery-operated potty-training machine; Atlas (Craig Robinson), a GPS navigator in the shape of a hippo head; and Snappy (Shelby Rabara), a plastic starter camera. Each lends their innate functionality to the resolution of the plot, which, to be fair, is creative and multi-threaded in its own right, and is aided by the series' signature flow, humor, and emotion. We still care about these toys and what happens to them, and it's nice that the screenplay doesn't view analog and digital toys in binary terms, where the traditional toys are pure, real, and necessarily the best option for kids, and that digital toys are cheap, destructive, and devoid of purpose and craftsmanship. The movie sees the value of both, and one of the strengths of the story is that Jessie, whom most of the movie revolves around, is challenged to think beyond her set ways and realizes she may have pre-judged her electronic cohorts too harshly.

To be clear, there are many delightful and smile-inducing developments in "Toy Story 5," including a charming new human character named Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris), an army of "premium" Buzz Lightyears, and a budding romance between the original Buzz and Jessie. But while all of this is fine and adequate, the essential spark, urgency, and wit that was so prevalent in the previous "Toy Story" movies feels muted by comparison in this fourth sequel. The reason is probably simple: it's the fourth sequel, and it's likely inevitable that the concept, characters, and wacky misadventures simply can't have the same kick and impact they once had.

Stanton and Harris also revisit former themes, namely that children eventually outgrow their beloved toys and ultimately seek human companionship. Didn't "Toy Story 3" already explore this idea? And why did the filmmakers return to Jessie's story about being abandoned by her original owner, Emily, complete with a leitmotif of Sarah McLachlan's "When She Loved Me" on the soundtrack? Sure, this was touching and enduring in "Toy Story 2," but did it need to be flushed out more?

"Toy Story 5" continues the franchise's streak of being bright, sweet, and jovial, which are all good things for its core target audience of kids and young people, but for those who grew up with this series and continued to find it appealing well into our adulthoods, I think the magnetism is gone, with the telltale sign being that it’s starting to repeat itself. It's not easy to write these words given that "Toy Story" has been so rewarding over its 30-year reign as the quintessential computer-animated movie franchise. Still, it's understandable that its pull is no longer what it used to be, but just like our toy heroes, it's probably best that we just accept it and move on.