Review: ‘Toy Story 5’ takes on screentime with a superbly drawn ode to play
2026 / Dir. Andrew Stanton
Rating: 4.5/5
Watch if you like: any Toy Story movie, remembering there’s a whole wide world out there and you’ve ruined your child by giving them an iPad.
We’re 16 years out from Toy Story 3, which effectively concluded the journey of Woody, Buzz, and the rest of Andy’s toys as Andy left for college and they began a new journey with a new kid, Bonnie. Of course, that wasn’t the real end, with Toy Story 4 returning as a coda to Woody’s story, which was well received by critics and more mixed by fans, judging by its 3.3 Letterboxd score and some lingering resentment that it was even made at all. And, of course, there was a Buzz Lightyear prequel-spinoff thing that was beloved by few and lost Disney $106 million. Though Pixar could have easily walked away or doubled down with a Woody western, Toy Story 5 successfully moves away from nostalgia by tackling how kids play today in the age of the “iPad kid.”
When we catch up with Bonnie (Scarlett Spears, an actual nine-year-old!), she’s having a blast with the toys, imagining a wedding between trash-turned-toys Forky, the plastic fork, and Karen Beverly, a plastic knife, that quickly goes off the rails. Whenever a child plays with the toys, the animation shifts to a vivid, watercolor-esque look that’s quite effective at showcasing a kid’s fantasy world. Bonnie’s a quirky, imaginative child, but struggles to make friends, something Jessie the Cowgirl (Joan Cusack) is desperate to solve through an early mission to find out what the neighbor twins are up to. Turns out they, and every other kid in the neighborhood, are all glued to screens, leaving the streets full of forgotten toys forced to fend for themselves now that “the age of toys” is over.
Bonnie’s parents buy her a Lilypad (Greta Lee), basically an iPad for kids, hoping it will help her make a friend. Not quite a true villain, Lilypad is hyperactive and driven in her own quest to find Bonnie's friends, quickly getting her into a group chat with some girls from her dance class who invite her to a sleepover… where they all play on their iPads. Soon, the toys are in a box in the garage, and Bonnie is a depressed zombie addicted to screentime. Maybe if Jessie can find her a real friend, she can free her and, once again, save the toys?
While many elements are going to be familiar here to anyone who has seen one of these movies before, Stanton and co-writer Kenna Harris cleverly reposition the series to focus both on the experience of growing up as a pre-teen girl, where you can get cyberbullied when you’re only eight, and by positioning Jessie as the lead. Sure, Woody and Buzz are both there, but relegated to background subplots. Jessie becomes the emotional core of the story as she revisits her “abandonment” by her first owner, Emily, when she accidentally ends up at Emily's old house, now occupied by a new girl, Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris).
Most importantly, Toy Story 5 is a lot of fun. Jessie’s on a constant, tightly scripted adventure that’s frequently hilarious without a ton of pointless zaniness that’s often thrown into kids’ movies. The animation quality is superb and less rigid in its style than a lot of Pixar movies can feel, with a mix of the usual, albeit upgraded, Toy Story look, the sequences where Bonnie’s playing with the kids, and a side plot we cut to intermittently of a fleet of Buzz Lightyear toys in search of Star Command, often shot at night like a steely sci-fi movie with lighting that’s simply gorgeous.
Though it may not seem as devastating or thematically rich as Toy Story 3 on the surface, the message of Toy Story 5 is vital for kids and their parents living in a world that’s more isolating than ever before. Play is an important part of self-discovery and growing up. That’s going to look different for every child—a fork and knife marriage for some and a Wi-Fi-enabled potty training computer thing (of course voiced by Conan O’Brien) for others—and that’s okay, as long as they’re able to be true to themselves and find people in their life who value them for who they are and not just for social media comformity.