4 min readJun 19, 2026 02:36 PM IST
Toy Story 5 movie review: Child’s play has always been serious business in the Toy Story franchise.
Now, it’s just business.
The fifth iteration of this profitable Pixar franchise is way past its game and, more importantly, has lost its sense of play. The central idea is that tech and tablets are replacing toys and imagination. By the end, the central takeaway is that the twain can co-exist happily.
After all, says a wisened Jessie/Sheriff (Cusack), once much water has flown under the bridge, the sole mission on Earth for all of them — the ageing Woody (Hanks) to smitten Buzz (Allen) to new-plaything-on-the-block Lilypad — is to be there for the kids when they need them, at the right moment.
Could that moment also have something to do with the fact that Pixar owner Disney needs the tech bros by its side, as much as any other corporate, in the world according to Donald Trump?
The message of tech being not just man’s but also a kid’s best friend is reached via a predictable story by now. Continuing from Toy Story 4, Jessie, Buzz and others remain toys of Bonnie (Spears), who hasn’t aged a bit in the many years since the third Toy Story that she first appeared in. However, her free time now is taken over almost entirely by the tablet Lilypad (Lee), where she desperately seeks out friends in group chats, which can quickly turn mean.
Jessie, Buzz, Bullseye and others, the toys Bonnie has stopped playing with, lie forgotten around her room or under her bed, hoping for her attention. Woody and Bo (Bo Peep) have been discarded and are surviving on the streets, till Jessie turns to Woody for help in finding Bonnie some real — and not just online — friends.
The film deploys many convoluted ways and a lot of bouncing around roads and fields and many landscapes to tie the different strands together, and to complete the circle from Bonnie to this “real” friend they are seeking, Blaze (Harris).
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The adult forces driving this franchise that began, unbelievably, 30 years ago are evident everywhere. It was around that time, in the early 1990s, that the US Congress passed one of its first Acts in a bid to monitor the Internet. It was also around then that Unabomber was finally arrested.
Clearly, the world has long been chasing the elusive ground in the middle, now with laws banning social media for under-16s.
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Another Toy Story, with little meat on it but a Taylor Swift song and a $250 million budget — making the fifth film among the costliest animation movies ever made — is as good a story of excess as any.
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Woody, Buzz and Jessie are a long way from where they started. Even longer away from when Andy and Woody bid the loveliest of goodbyes to each other, in that perfect Toy Story 3 about change and growing up: “So long… partner.”
Toy Story 5 movie director: McKenna Harris, Andrew Stanton
Toy Story 5 movie voice cast: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Scarlett Spears, Conan O’Brien, Greta Lee, Mykal-Michelle Harris
Toy Story 5 movie rating: 2 stars
Toy Story 5 returns to that first drama of replacement. Bonnie gets a tablet — Lilypad — and the older toys again face a newer technology. Bonnie is smitten by the shiny thing that listens, remembers, and responds. The older toys once needed her, but they also need her to remain animated.