If after five movies they were tired of the Toy Story moniker – which would never happen, since it’s one of the world’s most profitable – then Abandonment Issues might happily step in as a name for this franchise. Is it really possible that after 31 years, the most compelling material they can come up with for a new Toy Story movie is the toys worrying, once again, about their kids ditching them?

Setting aside the obvious financial incentives for a fifth Toy Story movie, you’d think the main reason for making Toy Story 5 would be that they haven’t yet done technology as an antagonist for Woody, Buzz et al – with cowgirl Jessie (voice of Joan Cusack) taking the lead this time. But maybe the time to do this would have been Toy Story 4 or even Toy Story 3, as it isn’t just a 2020s phenomenon that we’re worried about losing our kids to screens that stunt their imaginations. This is Pixar, this is a Toy Story movie, and Andrew Stanton is the director, so you know they’ve done it with a modicum of charm and panache. But now Pixar is finally feeling really behind the times, and scrambling back to excessive familiarity as a coping mechanism.

Actually the zombification of today’s children in front of glowing rectangles is no joking matter, and Toy Story 5 is clever enough to give us a tweak on its previous themes. While the maturing of people who used to play make believe has always been the sword of Damocles hanging over these toys, now it isn’t just the inevitability of puberty that’s the enemy. Devices – embodied by a cheery frog-shaped tablet called Lilypad (voice of Greta Lee) – are forcing kids to grow up a few years faster than they otherwise would.

Bonnie (voice of Scarlett Spears) is the tweener here, though that doesn’t mean she’s a tween. The movie ages her at 8, which was well within the toy-playing era for anyone reading this. But if you’re too young to seek out a movie review website, and therefore you aren’t reading this, you might have dropped your toys before age 8, when a shining flat surface began programming your entertainment and demanding your exclusive attention.

The ideal Bonnie would still be playing with her toys. We meet her when she’s hesitant to introduce herself to, and play with, the new neighbours, who laugh at her when she waves hello with Jessie’s hand. But it turns out Bonnie can’t find any friends, at all, because every neighbourhood window contains a child entranced by a device. Her parents, concerned as any parents would be, get her an extremely kiddie-friendly device to keep pace. But that doesn’t mean its age-appropriate games don’t still have chat rooms, where new “friends,” in the online sense, can mildly bully Bonnie for her old-fashioned ways. And it doesn’t mean Bonnie is immune to the screen’s other addictive charms, such that she can only murmur distracted and uninformed confirmations of whatever question her parents have just asked her.

Jessie is eager to assess the threat posed by these girls who are Bonnie’s new “friends,” so she sneaks into Bonnie’s overnight bag for a sleepover, her trusty horse Bullseye by her side. This leads to a series of adventures that include an unexpected return to the home of Jessie’s original owner, and unwittingly teaming up with the discarded devices of the child who lives there now, including a digital camera for kids, and a potty training device with a basic black and green graphical readout.

The other toys are around, sure, but after five movies, there are way more superfluous characters than useful ones. If Mr. Potato Head, Slinky Dog and the neurotic T-Rex thought they didn’t have enough to do in the last couple movies, those voice actors should be firing their agents at this point. Popular new characters introduced in the last instalment — the daredevil motorcycle rider voiced by Keanu Reeves, and the plastic utensil with googly eyes known as Forky – have even less to do. But when even Woody and Buzz feel like they’re being shoehorned into the action, with story arcs that either don’t resonate (Buzz wants to propose to Jessie) or simply don’t exist (Woody’s just … there), then it seems really clear how much this franchise is running on fumes.

And yet … and yet like almost any Pixar project, there’s creativity to spare here. The most interesting narrative flourish may come from a shipping container of Buzz Lightyear toys that ended up on a desert island, with each of about 50 Buzz Lightyears joining together to try to find their way to Star Command. Don’t forget, a virgin Buzz comes with no individuality nor even an understanding that it’s a toy, a fact this series has made hay from for years. It seems like a callback to the first movie that these Buzzes work in concert with the same goal in mind, not unlike the battalion of green plastic army men who first sent our imaginations into orbit back in 1995. Today’s kids might not even recognise a green plastic army man if they saw one in the wild.

And a Toy Story movie – say, this Toy Story movie – can still get mileage from new characters. Conan O’Brien’s work as the potty training device is pretty fun. When he awakens in the cubby house amongst a tea party long since forgotten, his battery is so low that he’s like a staggering drunk. Jessie’s collaborations with him and the other archaic devices is another interesting new element.

Still, it’s hard to escape the notion that these are superficial variations on the tried-and-true format, and they don’t ultimately impress very much in and of themselves. It already felt like a violation when they made Toy Story 4 back in 2019, when the series seemed to have wrapped up perfectly nine years before that. When that movie was okay, we really wanted to say “Okay, please stop now.” Toy Story 5 is further evidence of creative paralysis by those shepherding the Toy Story franchise, and now it’s hard to imagine them stopping these movies unless someone like Tom Hanks or Tim Allen dies. Even with the welcome shift to Jessie as the protagonist, we can’t help but think: Didn’t we already devote a movie to Jessie’s anxieties in Toy Story 2? Abandonment issues indeed.

 

Toy Story 5 is currently playing in Australian cinemas.