Toy Story 5

Has it really been 30 years? An animation that tapped into our childhood nostalgia right from the get-go back in 1995, a new Toy Story movie now feels like a time machine back to the time we first watched a Toy Story movie – a kind of meta-nostalgia there’s definitely a German word for. Poor Woody has a bald spot and a paunch now – although of the original gang only Woody seems to have aged. And us. 

Wisely, the pacy and imaginative Toy Story 5 leans into the same tensions that fuelled those first three films: the fear of being outgrown and left behind, and the peace that comes from accepting when it’s time to let go. Cynics will note that Pixar itself is having a similar problem with letting go of its OG franchise. And they’ll also point out that introducing a fear of technology – embodied here by a tablet called Lilypad (voiced by Greta Lee) – is a bit rich from a pioneering tech studio that helps keep kids glued to screens.

But this franchise still has the power to defy cynicism. Call me a softie but Toy Story 5 left me feeling giddy, original-trilogy wonder. A sense of joy at being back in this delightful world, with its golly-gee Randy Newman anthems, its celebration of the eccentric, odd and plain doolally, and its big heart. Barbie made us feel empathy for one toy; this film does it for a dozen. 

Most of the playthings and gadgets from the four previous films are back, including Forky (Tony Hale), Keanu Reeves’s stunt biker Duke Caboom and cult hero Combat Carl (Ernie Hudson). Woody and Buzz take a backseat this time, with Andrew Stanton and Kenna Harris’s screenplay deputising Jessie (Joan Cusack) as the favourite toy of the painfully shy Bonnie – until she’s usurped by Lilypad.

‘The age of toys is over!’ yells a panicked peanut toy in a lucha libre costume called Dr Nutcase – spinoff, please – like Randy Quaid’s conspiracist theorist in Independence Day bellowing about alien invasion. They’re all right to be worried, because Lily is soon facilitating new online friendships for Bonnie and screentime is all the time. Even first generation tech like hilarious potty-training toy Smarty Pants (a show-stealing Conan O’Brien) is getting mothballed. The future is here and it’s rechargeable.

Barbie made us feel empathy for one toy; this film does it for a dozen

This is Stanton’s first Pixar directorial gig since Finding Dory and he brings the pep and vim largely missing from Toy Story 4. It needs them, because the story darts from one rescue mission to another, as various toys get marooned, stranded or thrown away. (This is the most rescue missions I’ve seen in one movie that didn’t involve Gene Hackman and a Viet Cong POW camp.) A squad of next-gen Buzz Lightyears, meanwhile, is en route to reprise some hardy old Toy Story beats, while the real space ranger goes a bit ‘Spanish Buzz’ in his efforts to woo Jessie.

Jessie, though, is busy trying to keep her human smiling and finding her own way past her own fear of rejection in a journey that takes her to another lonely girl, Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris), on a farm out of town. And if you’re thinking trusty steed Bullseye is going to meet a real horse and have a full-blown identity crisis, well, you’d be half right. The two become firm friends, one of the touching new bonds that keeps this fifth movie feeling fresh.

The message of finding balance between analogue and digital, old-school toys and tech, may seem woolly to some. But balance feels like the solution to this 21st century parental quandary – and maybe to Hollywood’s legacy sequel problem: play to your old strengths, but have timely purpose in doing so. Toy Story 5 strikes that balance nicely. 

In cinemas worldwide Fri Jun 19.