Five installments in and this beloved Pixar franchise still hasn’t lost its steam. Now admittedly, I was in the camp of believing the Toy Story franchise should’ve ended at the third film. I know this is a common sentiment, but the finality that Toy Story 3 represented was undeniable, especially considering its coming of age themes and the emotional departure of one of Toy Story‘s central protagonists, Andy. However, following the events of Toy Story 4, Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Jessie, and the rest of the gang return once again, this time facing off against the biggest threat facing today’s children, technology. This film’s antagonist comes in the form of a tablet called a Lilypad. This tablet is given to our new child protagonist that we’ve been following for the past couple of films, Bonnie, in an attempt for her to connect to other kids her age easier. However, Bonnie and the other children’s relationship with technology drives a wedge in between them and everything our gang of toys stands for, real connection. As per usual with Pixar, the animation and the voice performances from the cast were phenomenal. Despite being five installments in, if you’ve been following the Toy Story franchise for a long time, seeing all these characters together and going on adventures again will never fail to give you a nostalgic kick. The new technology based characters such as the villain Lilypad and other supporting characters such as Smarty Pants, Snappy, Atlas, and an army of digitized Buzz Lightyears (No, I’m not making this up.) made for fun additions to the cast, with their banter amongst the rest of our characters and the comedic set pieces that ensue being thoroughly entertaining. Of course, with this being a Pixar film, it has pretty much become tradition for the animation studio to pull at the heartstrings in one form or another. Like I mentioned before, this time around the film’s emotional resonance is centred around the very real world transition from toys to technology and how that effects children as a whole in terms of how they connect with one another and see the world around them. These themes and messages were conveyed quite beautifully, even tying into the events of Toy Story 2 in some pretty heartwarming ways. Overall, seeing what the Toy Story franchise is doing with its messaging when it comes to how it can relate itself to the real world and the concept of play itself is precisely the reason why I’m okay with this series continuing. Never thought I’d ever say this, but I think I’m open to a Toy Story 6 as well, if that ever were to happen. Score: 9/10
Noah Robinson 