Movie Review: Toy Story 5

(Once again, I tried to write this with the fewest spoilers possible, but some may have slipped through – read at your own risk!)

I don’t think we realize just how spoiled we’ve been by Pixar. Even if the company has had its ups and downs, as well as its controversies (looking at you, Lasseter), their output has still been, for the most part, stellar. Roughly three of their films out of four have racked up aggregator scores of 90% of higher. We expect Pixar to be a seal of quality, and as a result we tend to put that studio specifically to an even higher standard than the others. Almost to an obsessive degree; I swear there are people who take delight hearing about the cinematic missteps the studio has had, and knocking them down a peg.

And that’s… not great? I wouldn’t call that a healthy way to look at media, anyway. In the grand scheme of things, Pixar movies usually do things so well that we are often left with mostly minor critiques, aside from the occasional greater problem (and even then, it’s usually in regards to the story). When they release real clunkers, we remember them, because we know just how high their usual level of quality is. I know Toy Story 4 has its detractors, and it does have its issues, especially regarding character development and its conclusion. But it’s still a good movie. It’s not “The worst thing I have ever seen, oh my God!” …If you say that about any Pixar film, go watch The Emoji Movie and then come back. You clearly need some new perspectives. No, go, I insist. Only by suffering through torture do you get to truly enjoy the good in life.

That attitude seemed to permeate the entire existence of Toy Story 5, directed by Andrew Stanton and released to theaters on June 19th, 2026. It began at its first announcement (“Oh great, they’re beating the dead horse again”) and continued through other reveals that soured opinions quickly. “What do you mean, Woody is back with the toys??” Or: “Oh, so it’s Toys vs. Technology? Really?” Which was followed in one of two ways: Either, “What business do Disney and Pixar have to lecture us about tech, especially after Disney’s (now-defunct, thank God) AI deal?” or “They’re gonna say the toys are the only good ones and it’s gonna be 100 minutes of old men yelling at clouds.”

Sigh. All ye of little faith, I say, hypocritically. See, I, too, was fully prepared to have those exact thoughts. Until I remembered Coco, Soul, Elemental, Inside Out 2, Elio and Hoppers.

The story

The gang of toys has been adapting nicely to living with Bonnie (Scarlett Spears), without Woody (Tom Hanks). The little girl has promoted Jessie (Joan Cusack) to sheriff, and the cowgirl has been taking her role as leader of the toys seriously, taking Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) as her second-in-command. Buzz is still in love with Jessie but has been incapable of asking her to officialize this. (Even Bonnie’s wedding-themed playtimes don’t seem to help him with finally spitting it out.)

Bonnie is a very shy kid, and she struggles to make friends with other children in the neighborhood. It doesn’t help that most kids in the area have already fallen to the great threat of… *gasp* Technology! Staying in their houses all day staring at screens! Bonnie’s parents come to a similar conclusion; to make friends, perhaps their daughter needs a tablet of her own. The LilyPad (Greta Lee) arrives in the household shortly afterwards.

Immediately, the tablet proves to be trouble, considering herself superior and being packed with games, apps, and other features that cause the little girl to grow disinterested in her toys. After all, she can use Lily to play video games, chat online with friends, and can even use it to make plans to meet those friends later! Surely that’s not all bad, right? Unsure of what to do, Jessie uses a hidden walkie-talkie to ask Woody for advice. The cowboy has been living as a free toy, helping other toys everywhere; though many are showing trauma from being replaced by screens. Woody mishears that his old friends need his help, so he goes for support.

The pajama party Bonnie attends goes awry, and Jessie and Bullseye the horse end up lost in the neighborhood. They are picked up and taken to the faded address written on Jessie’s trousers. The home of the cowgirl’s first owner. A traumatic memory she hasn’t entirely processed yet. However, the place is now housing a different family, the Manoukians, who own a barn on the property. Jessie ends up meeting new toys… some of which are partly electronic.

Woody arrives right as Jessie and Bullseye are missing. They must therefore create a plan to deal with Lily (who, despite her hostility towards non-electronic toys, genuinely thinks that she is doing the right thing and helping raise Bonnie through her many features). They must also figure out where their two friends are, and how to bring them back home.

There’s a sub-plot involving an army of modern Buzz Lightyears. I’d rather not say anything about that one. It’s too fun to spoil.

The review

As you could tell from this synopsis, this movie is far more Jessie-centric than previous ones in the series; it’s passing the torch. It’s a nice way to tie up loose ends that had not been addressed by the fourth film (like Jessie and Buzz’s romance) or needed a new movie so that such a topic could have its room to breathe (like Jessie having to confront the source of her abandonment trauma). It does lead to the film feeling a little scattered, since this all happens in the backdrop of the “Toys vs. Tech” main plot, but everything ties together in the end. This change in focus leads to Bullseye getting a lot more screentime and plot importance, seeing as the non-talking toy horse was not given much to do in TS4.

Speaking of! Let’s address the elephants in the room, starting with the simpler one: Woody’s presence. Honestly? I liked the way the film went with it. Woody is still an “abandoned toy” and is happy with his new friends. Him coming back is only to lend a hand with the crisis, and to top it off, it’s all based on a miscommunication, so it wasn’t even intentional. He has his own arc, in a way; for starters, his age is starting to show, as evidenced by the bald spot caused by the brown paint of his hair erasing away. That’s not a spoiler, it’s a joke shown in the trailers. Of course, back with his old gang, he immediately tries to go back to a leadership role, forgetting that he has passed the mantle. This leads to fun banter with Buzz. Ahh, like the old days.

The biggest one, though, is the whole thing about toys battling the growing omnipresence of technology. We can go into this film with all kinds of preconceived ideas as to how that’s gonna go. As if the crew at Pixar hadn’t already thought about this kind of reaction from audiences. They knew they couldn’t say only toys are good, this message would be outdated, and families today wouldn’t be able to adapt to such an Aesop. They couldn’t say only tech is good, because… well, this IS a series called Toy Story, for starters, but also, this would be disregarding the well-documented issues that too much focus on screens and tablets can cause in a child’s growth.

I knew the film would eventually come to a middle ground, but I didn’t know where exactly it would land. I was yet again disregarding the storytelling skills of the people at Pixar Studios, who managed to find a way to make it interesting and much deeper than one would expect. I offhandedly mention that LilyPad does believe she is doing the right thing by her standards as a toy computer. She antagonizes the rest of the cast over it! But she is a full-fledged character, and you know how it tends to be with this studio; if a character is an obvious villain, we’re going to see more depth on their part as the story progresses.

The film’s theme allows it to tackle several topics regarding kids’ relationship with technology. Screen addiction; the impression that kids are growing too quickly for their age, not from normal socialization, but because of online interactions; online bullying; the need to set a limit on screen time; and parents having to stay aware of what’s happening on their child’s screen. For what it’s worth, Bonnie’s parents are portrayed as very responsible on that front, and any mistakes they make were either engineered by Lily, or happened because Bonnie, being shy, kept silent about things that happened with her friends. I expected that a movie like this would do its best to show a positive portrayal of how parents can allow screens into a kid’s life, with reasonable restrictions and by always keeping track of what’s happening with them.

Ultimately, the film settles on a message that goes somewhat like normal recommendations. Toys, tech: They can coexist. Kids can have screentime, but they must also have time away from technology to learn other skills, both personal and social. What truly matters is that kids keep using their imagination, and that they make real friends that they’ll be able to rely on.

The film does introduce many new characters; though, which Toy Story doesn’t? These movies always feature new places and, with them, new toys. The one I most dreaded being annoyed by is the hygiene-training, toilet roll-shaped tech toy Smarty Pants, voiced by Conan O’Brien, whose jokes generally boil down to toilet humor and puns. Perfect example of a character that doesn’t give a great first impression. Nor a second. But the character does come around and ends up being fun, even if it takes time for him to be endeared alongside  I guess another critique I could have is that the other toys, both those that belonged to Andy originally and those that were with Bonnie, don’t seem to get as much in the way of interactions. They’re not forgotten, but they aren’t getting as much spotlight as the big names. So many other roles, like the toys introduced in TS4, are reduced to cameos.

For what it’s worth, I liked this one enough that a thought occurred to me. If Pixar makes a sixth movie to make these films like a sort of “Andy Trilogy” and “Bonnie Trilogy”, I would be cool with it. Maybe a sixth movie would cover a topic similar to that of TS3, but approached differently. Bonnie grown up, giving the toys away, andhow it happens that time, and how the gang deals with it. Who knows. Either way, I’m confident that the folks at Pixar would find a good idea for it.