‘Toy Story 5’ is just fine
Greta Lee voices a villainous tablet in the latest installment of the Pixar franchise as toys battle and the film itself wrestles with what it still has to say
From left, Jessie, Buzz Lightyear, and Woody in "Toy Story 5."
Pixar
Words by Siddhant Adlakha
Pixar’s Toy Story 5 has the appearance of something new, as our beloved anthropomorphized action figures reckon with the age of the iPad kid. However, three decades and five movies on, the franchise has reached an unfortunate (though perhaps inevitable) creative rut, with recycled ideas and character arcs loosely strung together and sprayed with shiny paint. It’s a competent film that seldom ceases to be entertaining, albeit in a passive sense, which only allows for fleeting moments of meaning nestled between too many scattered stories. This makes it a far cry from the series’ previous highs. As kids’ movies go, it’s fine—but must we really settle for less from a kind of movie once filled with joy and poignant wonder?
The animation giant’s bizarre penchant for photorealism of late (and for the lens artifacts of realistic photography) yields uncanny environments, like the tiny deserted island on which the movie opens. Here, we’re introduced to a shipment of lost Buzz Lightyear action figures, who soon awaken, and try to make their way back to civilization. The artistic goal of total naturalism makes the world a little less playful, though it does open up the possibility of newer, darker ground—at least in theory. Toy Story 5 is not that kind of movie, so this disconnect of form and tone is something you just have to get used to, along with the perfunctory nature of this Buzz-fleet plotline. Like the astronaut hero of the 1995 original (voiced by Tim Allen), these aforementioned, unknown Buzzes must reckon with their nature as toys in a human world, a well-worn story that plays out on fast forward, as the film keeps cutting back to their unrelated adventure, which feels plucked from an idea for some un-produced Pixar short. Despite taking up a good chunk of the runtime, the only function they serve is as a late third-act plot convenience before disappearing, so you cut them out without losing very much.
However, that this clunkiness doesn’t entirely derail the film speaks to how rich the series’ history has been. The emotional core of Toy Story 5 can be located in the tale of Jessie (Joan Cusack), once the cowgirl sidekick to Sheriff Woody (Tom Hanks). After the latter decided to shepherd lost toys in the wild (in Toy Story 4), Jessie has become de facto leader of the remaining trinkets. They belong to a now 8-year-old Bonnie (Scarlett Spears) after having been donated to her as a kindergartener by once-series mainstay Andy, when he grew up and left for college. The passage of time has always been a major element of the saga, as has the supposed “aging” of the toys—Woody has a bald spot; Jessie sounds noticeably older—so Bonnie still being a little kid, and behaving much as she did in Toy Story 3 (2010) is another curious disconnect. However, it’s one the filmmakers at least try to fold into the larger story.
The girls in Bonnie’s class now play and socialize by way of Lilypads, frog-themed tablets in the vein of LeapFrogs, and they look down on Bonnie for still playing with toys and dolls. So, when Bonnie gets a Lilypad of her own—a device that sucks up her time and attention, voiced by a fast-talking Greta Lee—the main toys are put on notice yet again. It’s the umpteenth time they’ve had to reckon with obsolescence, so you’d think they’d be used to it by now, but there’s something sweet about Jessie, the series’ most jovial supporting character, getting to take the lead this time and come to some realizations of her own.
From left, Bullseye, Jessie, and Lilypad (voiced by Greta Lee) in "Toy Story 5."
Pixar
This happens by way of about a million coincidences and happenstances that see Jessie and her beloved steed Bullseye ending up at the house of Jessie’s former owner Emily, though she no longer lives there. The idea of Toy Story returning to one of its most devastating moments—Jessie’s Sarah McLachlan-scored flashback in the second movie—is a major promise the five-quel holds back from actually approaching. Instead, the tale becomes about Jessie trying to connect Bonnie with another equally playful girl, Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris), a 9-year-old who lives in Emily’s old farmhouse, out of the belief that she and Bonnie might just become friends.
It’s here that the movie’s concepts begin to feel half-baked. With its attention split between various plot threads—the wild Buzzes, Jessie’s return, our main lovelorn Buzz trying to find her, and Woody returning to assist him—what Toy Story 5 actually has to say about its human characters, or technology’s effects on them, gets lost in the shuffle. Sure, the other iPad kids seem to shun Bonnie, but Jessie and several other toys frequently discuss how she and Blaze are different from other children, but in a nebulous way that that movie never really pins down, beyond their interactions with the toys themselves. Is it something about their development? The way they interact with the world? Or perhaps even something about race? (Both girls are non-white, so the specter of racist rejection is unintentionally introduced). No, the real answer is that they like playing with toys and the other kids don’t; if anything, Jessie bemoans technology for making them grow up too fast. And while she eventually comes to a more mature understanding of her place in their lives, the central story ends up underscored by an idea that runs counter to the series’ original credo of dealing with growing up: it places a cushy, nostalgic value on refusing to do so.
When Bonnie and Blaze play with toys, they do so in imaginative ways, via scenes that take the form of crayon-drawn cutaways, and tales of surprising intrigue. But the movie makes only limp overtures towards what it actually means to have your attention stolen by the glow of a screen, and to have a twisted version of your self-worth reflected back to you. Director Andrew Stanton (of WALL-E and Finding Nemo fame) keeps things moving, but it’s hard to shake the sense that Pixar’s new top-down stewardship, under Inside Out director Pete Docter, might have had a negative effect on this entry, directly or otherwise.
Blaze (voiced by Mykal-Michelle Harris) in "Toy Story 5."
Pixar
In Tory Story 5, both new tech like the Lilypad and old toys like Jessie (as well as some abandoned 8-bit devices she meets along the way) function much as the personified emotions do in the Inside Out movies. They’re constantly sending instant messages on behalf of the two young human protagonists, and engineering situations for them to meet, based on what they believe is best for the little girls. However, they’re external to Bonnie and Blaze, rather than manifestations of their feelings, which renders the movie’s human characters strangely inhuman in the process, as though they were being puppeteered with little autonomy. It’s hard to get invested in a character’s actions or emotions when they seem to have no say in them, or when the movie can’t seem to decide what actually separates them from their peers—and what they even need out of Jessie and co. in the first place beyond orchestrating a friendly meet-cute.
Apart from a brief scene in which Jessie gets to confront a specter of her past, the whole thing is oddly low stakes for a Toy Story sequel, and a Pixar film about growing up. The toys in the series have always represented parents to some degree, as they come to terms with letting their respective children outgrow them. So, there’s nothing particularly revelatory about Jessie’s catharsis other than the fact that it happens to her instead of Buzz or Woody (you’d think they’d have imparted some of their wisdom onto her). The closest the movie comes to nuance is Jessie and the seemingly sinister Lilypad coming to a kind of compromise, as symbolic parents with differing views about technology, but without exploring the pitfalls or benefits of either side, so while the film is technically an update, it never feels truly contemporary. But even on its own terms, as a girl-focused Toy Story for the modern world, it will certainly keep your attention, but the movie ends up too disorganized to find a real heart and soul, and too episodic and transient to be a meaningful chapter in any of its characters’ lives.
Published on June 16, 2026
Words by Siddhant Adlakha
Siddhant Adlakha is a critic and filmmaker from Mumbai, though he now lives in New York City. They're more similar than you'd think. Find him at @SiddhantAdlakha on Twitter