Those in creative fields have been pushing back against A.I. for years now, rightly lambasting it for taking away jobs, creating inaccurate characters in TikTok videos with six fingers, and being employed by far too many companies to write all kinds of words for them. As Ben Affleck famously said, “A.I. can write you excellent imitative verse that sounds Elizabethan. It cannot write you Shakespeare.” And it’s fascinating to note how films and TV programs are starting to slam A.I. hard as well. (BACKROOMS and the fifth season of HACKS, to name just two recent examples.) TOY STORY 5 does so too, albeit subtly, but make no mistake: the film feels that the very imagination of children is at stake, with too many electronic devices taking away the brainpower of those at play.
The story here brings back Woody, Buzz Lightyear, et al., along with some new characters, mostly in the form of electronic gadgets, all clamoring for children’s attention at playtime. Soon, it becomes obvious as old-school toys start to battle the newfangled tech ones. The main little girl at the center of the story here is a shy kid named Bonnie (voiced by Charlotte Spears). She’s considered old-fashioned for still preferring to play with dolls and figures like Jessie (Joan Cusack), Buzz (Tim Allen), Rex (Wallace Shawn), Forky (Tony Hale), and others you’ll recognize from the previous films. In one early scene, Bonnie acts out two of her toys getting married, and her imagination is shown as she creates the scenario. It’s wonderful to see how vivid and sometimes odd a child’s imagination can be, and TOY STORY 5 wholly embraces the silliness and unbridled leaps of faith in such minds.
Soon, Bonnie encounters other children who have moved beyond dolls and are now embracing thinking toys. Hoping to avoid having an ostracized child, Bonnie’s parents buy her an electronic LilyPad (Greta Lee), sort of a kid’s iPad with a frog personality. Soon, Bonnie starts ‘texting’ her friends via this device, and the viability of her existing toy box becomes a genuine survival issue. It’s a brave new world and a scary one for any toy like Jessie and Buzz who veer towards being ‘analogue.’
Enter Woody (Tom Hanks), Bo Peep (Annie Potts), and Duke Kaboom (Keanu Reeves), summoned by Jessie to help save the gaggle of old school toys, once again finding themselves on the way to obsolescence. It’s a battle that’ll play out for the remainder of the film that probably has too much plot, but at least director Andrew Stanton knows how to keep it all moving along and be emotionally moving too. The animation remains extraordinary, Randy Newman’s score is always a pip, and the voice work is sharp across the board. There is a lot of adult references sprinkled in throughout, including some wild ‘in-jokes’ such as when a character quotes the line “Take care of my son” from Paul’s devastating monologue in the Broadway musical A CHORUS LINE. Still, most of what’s on screen here should play well to almost everyone in the audience.
Should we expect even more sequels in the TOY STORY franchise? Probably, but I do hope Pixar leans into newer concepts. To do so would help their imagination’s argument against A.I., as well. But make no mistake, this fifth film is a smart and lovely effort and a noble one, too.
