What Critics Are Saying About ‘Toy Story 5’

“Toy Story 5” is the latest installment of Pixar’s longest-running franchise, which began in 1995.

The adventures of Buzz, Woody, Jessie, Bo Peep, Mr. Potato Head and the rest of their friends have been the inspiration for spinoffs, like the 2022 movie “Lightyear,” and countless real-life toys. Audiences have grown up alongside Andy and Bonnie.

Now, over 30 years since this story first began and seven years since “Toy Story 4,” “Toy Story 5” is here to address the emerging influence of technology over analog toys, like the “iPad kid” debate — or, in Bonnie’s case, her Lilypad (voiced by Greta Lee).

Keep reading to learn where major outlets stand on how “Toy Story 5” depicts this digital reality facing young kids and how the new movie, out June 19, fares among its four predecessors.

The New York Times

New York Times chief film critic Manohla Dargis says in her review that the latest “Toy Story” installment is about “loneliness and wanting to belong.”

It’s also concerned with themes from the past movies (“play, individuality, obsolescence, consumerism”), but now set in the age of “technocapitalsm.”

For Dargis, one of the most “genuinely poignant” parts of the movie is how the actors, like Tom Hanks and Joan Cusack, have aged along with the characters they are playing: “While time has only lightly scuffed the toys themselves over these many years, you can hear its passing in the voices of the performers.”

Ultimately, though, she feels there’s “only so far” Pixar can “push this story.”

“It’s fine, pretty and amusing, but if no one’s heart seems in it, perhaps it’s time to make way for other toys,” she writes.

The Hollywood Reporter

Even though chief film critic David Rooney believes the franchise “peaked with its magical second and third entries,” he still views “Toy Story 5” as an addition that “does the enduring franchise proud.”

Rooney reflects on why this may be the case, and pinpoints it to one actor and character’s return.

“Perhaps the key gain is that this scenario puts Jessie — national treasure Joan Cusack, returning to features after a quiet stretch of semi-retirement and bringing warmth, plucky spirit and tender lvulnerability to her voiceover work — in charge,” he writes.

Bonnie, who is now caring for Jessie alongside the rest of Andy’s hand-me-down toys, is less inclined to spend time on devices than her neighborhood friends. Bonnie’s parents buy her a Lilypad to get her up to speed socially, and this brings back bad memories for Jessie of being outgrown.

The Hollywood Reporter credits the movie for “heart and conviction” and “the insanely catchy original song from Taylor Swift.

Variety

For Variety’s Owen Gleiberman, “the fifth time’s a charm” with “Toy Story 5.”

He calls the movie “a sublime summing up” and “(just maybe) a perfect ending.”

Gleiberman emphasizes the common theme across the first four films: loss. With “Toy Story 5,” he names “the disappearance of play” as the central battle the movie focuses on.

“What ‘Toy Story 5’ is talking about is what’s known as imaginative play, and that’s not just an activity. It’s a whole dimension, a way for kids to take the universe that’s in their heads and extend it out into the world,” he writes.

“For this is a movie that touches on a profound question: How will kids connect to each other in an era that wants them to grow up too fast by virtualizing themselves?” Gleiberman continues. “The film’s message is: Slow down, be real and play. The fun you take is equal to the fun you make.”

The Guardian

The Guardian’s critic Peter Bradshaw was less charmed.

“As a piece of family-entertainment content it has the unblemished sheen of a brand new smartphone. But at heart, it has gone dead,” Bradshaw writes.

Specifically, Bradshaw said “the jeopardy, the novelty, the ideas and the passion are lacking; the crucial Toy Story theme of mortality feels underpowered, and the film even calamitously loses its nerve with its own big idea.”

While Bradshaw finds the depiction of the toys’ “secret existences” hilarious, the rest of the plot that deviates from this signature structure is “hugely convoluted.”

Bradshaw rounds out his review with the point that even Swift’s soundtrack addition doesn’t save the film from falling victim to “IP exhaustion.”

IndieWire

Contrastingly, David Ehrlich for IndieWire said “the series is only getting sharper with age” with “Toy Story 5,” giving the movie a B+ grade.

Ehrlich praises “Toy Story 5” for, even in “all its flaws,” proving “sharper than any of these movies have been since the late ’90s” and recognizing “how tech poses an unprecedented danger to the nature of play itself — how it threatens to make kids grow up even faster than they already did.”

Like other critics, he was also satisfied by Greta Lee’s debut into the toy franchise with the character of Lilypad.

A character Ehrlich was less thrilled with, however, was one of the leading faces: Woody.

“Woody’s superfluousness to the plot reflects his growing comfort with irrelevance, but that argument would carry more weight if this movie didn’t try so hard to return him to his former stature. Tom Hanks isn’t above a supporting role, but this franchise isn’t totally comfortable with him playing one yet.”

Despite some digs at a “scattered” and “somewhat undercooked” plot, Jessie’s navigation of obsolesce is among some standout moments that prove, for Ehrlich, that “this movie knows that life is never sweeter than it is during the moments, and years, when we simply can’t accept that love is also made out of plastic.”