Toy Story 5

 How many final installments does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

It should take one, while the others just show off by messing with it.

Just when you thought Toy Story 4 was it for Pixar's toys, along comes Toy Story 5. This time, they're not fooling anyone with promises of narrative closure (mostly), as it's kind of obvious this was made for money. Fortunately, it's still a pretty good installment, even if it's not a perfect one.

With Woody (Tom Hanks) off helping abandoned toys, Sheriff Jessie (Joan Cusack) and Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) are now in charge of Bonnie’s toys. Bonnie is the only kid on her block still playing with toys, while everyone else has upgraded to tech. Bonnie joins in when her parents get her a “Lilypad” tablet. Lily (Greta Lee) lords over the toys, especially after she helps Bonnie make “real” friends. 

While trying to spy on Bonnie and her new friends, Jessie and Bullseye accidentally end up at the farmhouse of Jessie's former owner, Emily, now home to the Manoukian family. Blaze Manoukian (Mykal-Michelle Harris), who’s slightly older than Bonnie, has both horse toys and tech toys. In the latter category, we have Smarty Pants the toilet trainer (Conan O’Brien), Snappy the Camera (Shelby Rabara) and Atlas the GPS (Craig Robinson). Jessie enlists them to get her & Bullseye home.

What else do we have? Throughout the film, there’s an army of updated Buzz Lightyears marching around for reasons. They’ll become relevant later. Woody visits his old gang and teams up with Buzz to try to save Jessie. Bonnie’s new friends aren’t nice, so the toys decide to help her meet Blaze. Lily tries to stop them, for a while.

Unlike some other toon sequels, this one tries a bit harder to tell a meaningful story. Andrew Stanton, the longtime series co-writer and now also-director, and Kenna Harris, his co-writer and co-director, focus much of it on Bonnie. You’ll spend most of her plotline feeling bad for her as she gets cyber-bullied - and lightly teased in person - by her three false friends. She’s so dejected by them that she declines Blaze’s friendship until the very end. Well, better late than never, for Blaze is a delightful character. 

Oh yeah, there are toys in this story, too. Jessie, much like Woody in the last film, struggles with feelings of obsolescence. Anyone who’s seen Toy Story 2, or knows of it, will know exactly what I’m referring to. She gets some much-needed closure when she finds a certain time capsule. Buzz spends most of the film crushing on Jessie, which gets a nice payoff in the climax. Woody and the veteran toys are here probably because it wouldn’t be Toy Story without them. Woody rallying the updated Buzzes probably could’ve been handled by classic Buzz himself. The others provide some good quips here and there, but that’s it.

The new tech characters are pretty good. Lily, our advertised main villain, spends most of her time looking down on the toys. Her ego’s pretty entertaining, but it gets creepy when she starts texting as Bonnie. She starts to redeem herself when she realizes that she indirectly hurt Bonnie and later gives the Buzzes their biggest relevance. Smarty is surprisingly not that gross, considering what he is. He and his pals are fun, even if their introduction sidelines the looming plot of tech replacing toys for “the tech and the toys can be friends.” It's a bit of a letdown, though it's admittedly a topic with no easy answer. 

Oh, and while not tech, extra funny points must be rewarded for naming Blaze’s pet pig Jimmy Dean. Even Jessie gets the reference.

It’s a Pixar movie, so of course the animation’s good. The climax is pretty thrilling, thanks to the Buzzes’ big surprise, but the best animated work is with the sequences that visualize the girls’ playtimes. The vivid colors and surprisingly elaborate plots go great together. While Randy Newman provides another fun score for the series, he let Taylor Swift & Jack Antonoff compose the central song. I Knew It, I Knew You plays in the end credits, and it’s another fine addition to the series’ song catalog. I wouldn’t be surprised if, following Newman’s nominations for each of the previous films, Swift gets her first Oscar nomination here.

Toy Story 5's main draws are, theoretically, the toys, but I found myself more interested in the humans this time. It's such a relatable story, especially for those who were shy kids growing up. If it does win the Animated Feature Oscar, much like its predecessors, then that would be why. But like any old toy, its main characters are still fun to be around even if they're showing their age. Have fun; I sure did.