Starring Joan Cusack, Tim Allen, Tom Hanks 

Directed by Andrew Stanton

Disney/Pixar – in Cinemas now

Woody, Buzz, Jessie and the rest of the gang face an existential threat when tech arrives in the house and Bonnie gets her first electronic, social media device. 

As I headed for the exit at the end of Toy Story 5, it was a salutary reminder of the crushingly inevitable march of time that not one of the three young ushers patiently waiting to tidy up the piles of spilled popcorn before the next screening had even been conceived when we were first introduced to Woody, Buzz and chums back in 1995. And what innocent times those were. My own kids were both under five; change (of the Things-Can-Only-Get-Better variety) was in the air in the UK; no one had flown any passenger jets into New York skyscrapers; a mobile (when it wasn’t something dangling over a baby’s cot) was a luxury item for the sole purpose of making telephone calls, with finger-numbing text messaging having only been introduced two years earlier; and the worst a toy had to face was their child growing up.

Thirty-one years later and these are far darker times, and not just in terms of geo-politics. Toys, according to director Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, WALL-E, Finding Dory and co-penning Toy Story scripts since the beginning), are becoming redundant in the face of all an all pervading tech which renders imaginative play unfashionable and is thereby stunting the emotional growth of a whole generation.

Obviously this lecture is delivered through the medium of talking cowboy dolls and spacemen – with lots of derring-do and wall-to-wall wise-cracking – but a lecture it undoubtedly is, albeit one I heartily endorse. But then I would. If I identify with anyone in these movies it’s Mr Potato Head. Whether all this moralistic finger wagging will play to a younger audience is not for me to say, but it’s undeniable that the story and the anti-tech polemic are fighting for screentime, especially in the first half of the movie, which begs a more fundamental question: Is Toy Story 5 for kids at all?

The franchise has been wrestling with this problem since its third outing in 2010, which essentially cast Woody, Buzz et al as parents having to confront the passing of childhood, an idea originating 98 years ago in A.A. Milne’s concluding Winnie the Pooh story, In Which Christopher Robin and Pooh Come to an Enchanted Place, and We Leave Them There. I defy any parent to read that without having to reach for the tissues.

I’m certainly not the only person to observe that Toy Story isn’t about kids nor necessarily aimed at them at all – it’s about being a parent in all its joy and pain, which might be why the movies reduce me to blubber every time. My kids are both in their thirties and put away their childish things many years ago. Whaaaaah!!

But, hey, it’s Toy Story, and it’s Pixar doing what they do best – family therapy storylines executed with a level of delicious digital craftsmanship that leaves their competitors quivering in the dust of their own mediocrity. Hanks and Allen are starting to sound a little antediluvian, but then that’s kind of the point and the script nods to that with gags about Woody’s age, while appropriately enough the narrative is really driven by Joan Cusack’s feisty Cowgirl, Jessie. There are more nice nods the franchise’s heritage, with an army of shipwrecked Buzz Lightyears standing in for the Green Army Men that handled so many of the logistics in the first few movies.

The story holds no surprises whatsoever – which is why I don’t feel the need to expand on it – but if you can hack the tech lecture it’s still top quality animated entertainment, and doesn’t outstay its welcome as the fourth instalment did in 2019.

Verdict: Toy Story 5 is perhaps better than we have any right to expect from a thirty year old animation franchise – and if I’m going to be lectured by anyone, then Buzz, Woody and Jessie can wag their anti-tech plastic fingers all they like. If the world won’t listen to them then humanity is truly doomed. 8/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com