★★★½ (3½ out of 4)
Holy butterscotch! The “Toy Story” animated franchise from Disney/Pixar now has its own Darth Vader in the form of a digital device with a green frog frame that goes by the name of Lilypad (Greta Lee’s voice sounds a little mechanical or is that just me?). There’s an army of pads out there luring kids to the dark side where they don’t play with real toys anymore. Plush and plastic and fabric and felt can’t compete with screens! It’s the invasion of the A.I. devices.
Whoa! This sounds like “Toy Story 5” wants to scare us to death. Nah, it is a cautionary fable for sure, but brimming over with the same humor, heart and pure enchantment that started 31 years ago and has never let up. Let me say it loud: There are no bad “Toy Story” movies. Some may be better than others—the top for me is “Toy Story 3”—but the old movie magic that we knew so well is still reporting for duty under the direction of Andrew Stanton (“Wall-E”) who treats this franchise like the legacy classic it is. That doesn’t mean he can’t teach it new tricks.
Take the plot setup: You’ve probably already heard that Buzz (Tim Allen) and Woody (Tom Hanks)—now sporting a bald spot and (say it isn’t so) a paunch—take a backseat to rootin’-tootin’ cowgirl Jessie, voiced again with distinctive dazzle and stirring emotion by the great Joan Cusack. Riding in on her favorite stead, Bullseye (Alan Cumming), Jessie is the new sheriff when it comes to the playroom of Bonnie, the painfully shy eight-year voiced by Scarlett Spears.
The mean girls all laugh at Bonnie for hanging back with the oldies when the cool kids are all in digital thrall to Lilypad. The pad lures Bonnie into endless loops of group chats, online games, and scrolling that keep Bonnie glued to her screen. Jessie still isn’t over being discarded by her first child, Emily, back in “Toy Story 2.”
Some have accused “Toy Story 5” of putting entertainment second to preaching the gospel of old-fashioned values in a world enslaved by its devices. There’s some of that. But not in the sense of condemning the flashy AI fun Lilypad offers. Wait till you get a load of the battalion of Buzz Lightyears stuck in demo mode. The point here is to find a way technology can make peace with the traditional values of toys that bring children together in the flesh.
What can Jessie do to win Bonnie back to the team? Find her a friend. And that happens when Bonnie meets Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris), a nine-and-a-half-year-old who is as high-energy and off-the-wall as Bonnie isn’t. It’s Blaze who introduces her new buddy to kiddie camera Snappy (Shelby Rabara), GPS hippo Atlas (Craig Robinson) and best of all a kind of digital potty trainer named Smarty Pants, voiced by a snarkily hilarious Conan O’Brien. Is he the reason "Toy Story 5" is the first PG movie of the series? Maybe, but so what. He’s irresistible.
There are no bad ‘Toy Story’ movies and No. 5 proves it again.
The action and laughs are a big part of why we’re always eager for the next toy party. But the secret sauce in “Toy Story 5” is found in the relationship Jessie forges between Bonnie and Blaze, two friends who unite as outsiders and form a human connection. In the end, “Toy Story 5” is less interested in technology than in the girl power represented by Jessie, Bonnie and Blaze. That close bond between Jessie and Bonnie is captured in the new song that Taylor Swift did for the film with Jack Antonoff. It’s called “I Knew It, I Knew You” and it plays over the film’s end credits:
I knew you through the daze of the blades of the grass in summer
Parachutes for the free fall of being younger
I memorized the sound of your bare footsteps
Running wild, it's been a long time
Life has ways of leaving those days behind
But seeing you tonight
I remembered I loved you
Came back when it mattered, I saw you
Standing there in the light of the window
Wearing that same smile
Man, it's been a while
But I knew it, I knew you
That Oscar-bound song catches feelings that a device can replicate but never create. As Swift sings, “love has ways of bringing things back to life,” in her dedication to Jessie, she captures the heartfelt essence of why these films about toys and children have such a hold on us. And that goes for “Toy Story” 1, 2,3, 4 and now 5. They’re heartbreakers.