The “Toy Story” movies, like “Star Wars” and those games Michael Jordan played with the Washington Wizards, pose a problem of canon.
The first three movies are a near-perfect trilogy: a series that spanned a childhood: from bedroom playtime to college, from enchantment to loss. The scope didn’t seem epic. The movies rarely strayed much further than the pizza joint down the road or Al’s Toy Barn. Yet those first three films, so attuned to the pangs of both childhood and parenthood, seemed to stretch to infinity and beyond.
But, of course, narrative neatness is not an abiding principle in modern-day Hollywood franchise guardianship. Nine years after “Toy Story 3” — an ending as flawless as Jordan’s almost-goodbye jumper in 1998 — came “Toy Story 4.” It made a billion dollars, easy, and blew up the artful arc of “Toy Story.” The less said about “Lightyear” — for sure the Washington Wizards chapter of “Toy Story” — the better.
Yet as much as my bitter heart wanted to reject “Toy Story 4,” I had to grant that it was pretty good. There is only so much moral grandstanding I can do in the face of Tony Hale as a fork and Key and Peele as plushies.
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And “Toy Story 4” also had a decent point. If the original trilogy suggested the story ends when the kid reaches adulthood, the fourth movie is about Woody, the empty nester. Tom Hanks’ cowboy and Annie Potts’ Bo Peep find out life goes on after Andy. They might as well have moved to Florida.
This is my belabored way of saying “Toy Story 5” is, also, a crime against humanity and, also, pretty good. It may fall shy of the first three and probably ranks as the fifth best of these movies. But “Toy Story” has a high bar and the quality and thoughtfulness that has long distinguished Pixar is very much present here in the film directed and co-written by Andrew Stanton, a Pixar stalwart who goes all the way back to 1995’s “Toy Story.”
There are some basic things going for the latest “Toy Story” movie. This one moves Joan Cusack’s Jessie, the cowgirl, closer to the center, and she’s always been a hoot. The cute-as-a-button Bonnie (voiced by Scarlett Spears) is an upgrade over Andy. (Sorry, Andy.)
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But most of all — as the movie’s “toys vs. tech” advertising has made abundantly clear — “Toy Story 5” is predicated on an extremely relatable conflict for kids and parents, alike.
In “Toy Story 5,” tablets arrive just as ominously as weapons did in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Bonnie’s parents, fearing their child is being left out, cave in and get her a Lilypad (“Lily,” voiced by Greta Lee). When Bonnie brings Lily to a sleepover, the toys, peering through a basement window are appalled to find them “just sitting there.” Alarms are sounded.
“The age of toys is over!” shrieks a nearby forlorn toy. Later, the dinosaur Rex (Wallace Shawn) exclaims: “Extinction! Not again!”
In the world of “Toy Story,” as in ours, the onset of “screen time” is a legitimately cataclysmic event. It has, of course, been a central part of other recent animated movies. ( “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” and “Ron’s Gone Wrong” are among the many that come to mind.)
But taking up the topic means something more in a “Toy Story” movie — and not just because Pixar was the Bay area-based pioneer of digital animation. These films have done so much to capture childhood that they almost seem like part of all our own. And given just how profoundly screens have inserted themselves into the experience of growing up, the paradigm-shift storyline gives “Toy Story 5” something most sequels can’t claim: a reason for being.
Lily is a threat not just to the toys, but to 8-year-old Bonnie, too. She soon stops playing with her toys and becomes addicted to the device. We experience this as a kind of tragedy not just because it leads Bonnie even further into loneliness but because she’s doing it to fit in. Like a plague, none of the other kids play with toys, either.
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That humans never catch the toys in motion has always been a reliable gag in the “Toy Story” movies. But there’s an actually haunting scene this time. When the adventure ramps up, and a small band of toys take a short cut through a house, they go unnoticed because everyone inside has their heads buried in screens.
There’s also a parent on a Zoom call in “Toy Story 5” and something like cyberbullying, in toddler form. The fallout of Bonnie’s Lilypad experience sends Jessie and Bullseye to the farmhouse where Emily, Jessie’s first child, once lived. There now is a horse-riding, creative 9-year-old named Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris).
It’s not hard to see the answer to the toys’ existential doom: a playdate. Getting Bonnie and Blaze together becomes a rescue mission for Jessie, her familiar pals (including a visiting Woody) and a small group of Blaze’s own lost playthings. Those include a band of early-generation AA-battery devices like a potty trainer (Conan O’Brien), a camera (Shelby Rabara) and a GPS-enabled hippo (Craig Robinson).
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The ensuing action — which includes a fleet of Buzz Lightyears (Tim Allen) in demo mode — is predictably delightful, even if it’s not (snobby voice again) top-tier “Toy Story” stuff. But the most convincing thing about how all this gets settled are the few sections of crayon-styled drawings that animate moments of pure, childlike play. These scenes, the products of Bonnie or Blaze’s imaginations, are like wonderful entreaties to kids (or beyond) to make your own fun.
The “Toy Story” movies are about growing up, and maybe that means realizing the original trilogy wasn’t a hill to die on. After all, we all know that the real hill to die on is that the best Pixar movie is “Ratatouille.”
“Toy Story 5,” a Walt Disney Co. release in theaters Friday, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for some thematic elements and rude humor. Running time: 102 minutes. Three stars out of four.
