Toy Story 5

Toy Story 5 is a heartwarming return to the beloved franchise that combines nostalgia with fresh storytelling. The animation is stunning, the voice cast delivers exceptional performances, and the emotional depth rivals even the original films. A must-watch for families and animation fans alike. For more entertainment recommendations, check out kakadu casino.

The movie series that would've had a perfect ending with Toy Story 3 manages to, once more, not screw up with another sequel.

So, yeah, I think Pixar once again managed to make a good movie and a good Toy Story with this one. Not the best or a totally awesome one. A safe one. But I'm still quite happy with it.

Short summary (spoiler free): A good movie that, to me, feels more like an "Inside Out", where it heavily relies on the toys trying to steer Bonny's life and also has a much bigger focus on the human characters. Jessie is a strong protagonist, but most of the other toys are actually not really important, especially the original "Andy's Toys" group. Very nice and emotional depiction of the emotions of a child trying to make friends and the, sometimes hard, part the parents have in it, but less "toy adventure" than the previous movies. I still recommend it, but it feels a bit different to me.

Full review (contains basic "act" spoilers but no ending, etc.):

Jessie does a great job as a new protagonist, and while Buzz's role isn't exactly too important for the main plot, I do think Jessie and Buzz's dynamic can work quite well. The same as Woody and Buzz did before.

The main plot is a quite nice idea: How do electronic devices influence how toys are seen and handled in the lives of kids? And I'm happy to see that it doesn't fully go the "electronic devices are bad" route.

Every Toy Story started off quite slow and tame before the emotional stuff hit. And the "how will the new toy influence our lives?" idea is once again the same that Toy Story 1 already used. And that's actually a point where this movie feels a bit repetitive. And it's also what I mean with "it's a safe one".

The worry is the same. The reaction of the other toys is the same. And Jessie's and Buzz's tries to calm everyone down are also very much the same as Woody did about Buzz in the first movie.

In general, the big number of total toys means that the ones th...

Even though there is a pretty clear and potent message here, this isn't my favourite from the franchise - in fact, in many ways it reminded me of what I felt was the much more engaging "Ron's Gone Wrong" (2021). "Bonnie" is a lonely little girl who still plays with her toys. This earns her the ridicule of her more tech-savvy classmates at school and so, despondent, her parents buy her a "Lilypad". This promises to be her route to inclusion and popularity and soon she is even being invited to a sleepover. She takes "Jessie" and "Blaze" with her and next day returns crestfallen, realising that her love for them is the source of her misery. "Lilypad" decides that action must be taken so starts to manipulate her messages so that the toys are confined to a box in the garage. That's when they send for "Woody". He and his friends must now find a way to free their boxed up companions and help them recover their place in her heart before "Lilypad" has them consigned to a charity shop. Crucial to their success might be "Smarty Pants". This is an early digital gizmo that has also been consigned to the back of a drawer as it'd been superceded and so in a sorry state with no battery power, these unlikely allies realise that they must work together to find "Bonnie" a real and much less fickle friend. Perhaps it's just the slightly over sentimental characterisation of "Bonnie" but this film seemed to take an age to get going and then when it did it forgot to remember that growing up involves a shedding of skins - physically and metaphorically. We all have favourite toys, records, clothes that we are joined at the hip with until we ultimately discard - and the emotional heart-strings this tries to tug all ran just a bit counter-intuitively for me. Sure, it offers us an indictment of a prevailing trend amidst society at large to rely on technology to do more and more for us, and to insulate us from the fun and perils of actually growing up with real people, but the ending maybe just...