Toy Story 5 (PG)

After Woody decides to stay with Bo Peep rather than return to the toy box, Jessie becomes the new leader of Bonnie's room. Buzz Lightyear is her second-in-command. The enduring appeal of the toys comes under threat when eight-year-old Bonnie develops a fixation on her frog-shaped computer tablet Lilypad. Jessie sends out an SOS and Woody answers the call.

LondonNet Film Review

Toy Story 5 (PG) Film Review from LondonNet

The age of toys is over. That dire proclamation, issued by discarded playthings whose human children have become zombified slaves to digital tablets, rallies Jessie (voiced by Joan Cusack), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and Woody (Tom Hanks) back into action in a heartfelt fifth chapter of the franchise that launched Pixar in 1995. Toy Story 5 contemplates the impact of electronic devices and online chat rooms on the mental wellbeing of young children through the lens of a rootin’ tootin’ adventure that teaches new tech old tricks about teamwork…

Jessie fills the void left by Woody as the new sheriff of Bonnie’s room. The cowgirl rag doll is devoted to the wildly imaginative eight-year-old (Scarlett Spears) and encourages playtime with physical toys, assisted by deputy sheriff Buzz, whose hardware gets pleasantly warm every time he thinks about Jessie. The status quo in Bonnie’s bedroom is disrupted by the arrival of a frog-shaped Lilypad computer tablet (Greta Lee). The girl’s parents hope the device will help their painfully shy child make friends in the neighbourhood. As if by magic, Lilypad connects Bonnie to members of her dance class and the tykes spend countless hours together, staring at and swiping their screens.

Bonnie loses interest in Jessie and co and the sheriff sends out an SOS for reinforcements. Woody answers the call, having seen first-hand how toykind is being forgotten. “Toys are for play but tech is for everything,” he laments to Jessie over walkie talkie. Once reunited, Bonnie’s toys orchestrate a daring plan to loosen Lilypad’s grip, which inspires a madcap cross-country adventure to befriend a horse-loving eight-year-old called Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris) and a fragile toy-tech alliance with three neglected, battery-powered gadgets: talking GPS hippo Atlas (Craig Robinson), toilet training gizmo Smarty Pants (Conan O’Brien) and digital camera Snappy (Shelby Rabara).

Toy Story 5 is an exceedingly polished and entertaining sequel that addresses timely concerns with a light touch. Nothing in Pixar’s toy box can approach the emotional devastation of the finale to Toy Story 3 but a script co-written by Andrew Stanton and Kenna Harris peddles the studio’s trademark blend of humour and lump-in-throat sentiment with confidence. It’s easy to take Pixar’s boundary-pushing artistry for granted but animators showcase a striking new aesthetic to visualise Bonnie’s playtime. In fantastically melodramatic sequences including a wedding interrupted at the altar, characters are rendered as a delightful mish-mash of crayons, chalk and felt tip pens as if Bonnie is drawing her imagination for us in real-time.

Cusack’s vocal performance is deeply moving as Jessie saddles up to bid farewell to her third human child and co-stars offer effervescent comic relief, particularly O’Brien’s chatterbox training tool. It’s been a seven-year wait since the fourth film and Stanton and Harris’s picture feels incredibly relevant. The toys are back in town and they are playing to win both hearts and minds.

– Jo Planter