Of the 14 feature films Disney/Pixar has released over the past decade, half of them have been sequels—Finding Dory (2016), a third Cars film (2017), a second Incredibles (2018), a fourth Toy Story (2019) and the spin-off Lightyear (2022), a second Inside Out (2024), and now a fifth Toy Story. It is not surprising that the Toy Story series has had the most entries given that the first film, released all the way back in 1995, was Pixar's (and the world's) first computer-animated feature film; and one might begrudge Disney/Pixar for going back to that well so many times except that they keep coming up with compelling stories to tell about a motley crew of children's playthings.

It is worth noting that Toy Story 5 is distinctly different from its predecessors in that it is the first of the series to focus as much on the experiences of the child who owns the toys as the toys themselves. The previous four films have all been some form of action-adventure tale in which the toys struggle for survival in the world—whether it be from the kid next door who steals toys and breaks them apart to make Frankensteinesque monstrosities, or a toy collector who sees only monetary value in them, or, in the last two installments, rival toys who want to use them in some way—while constantly having to pretend like they don't have autonomous life whenever a person is in the room with them. Toy Story 5, on the other hand, is not so much about the experiences of the toys themselves, but rather how they fit into the evolution of childhood play in the age of handheld computer technology—an irony, to be sure, since Toy Story led the charge in sidelining traditional hand-drawn animation over the past three decades.

As with the previous installments, Toy Story 5 introduces a major new toy to the mix, in this case a children's tablet computer that is shaped like a green frog and is named Lilypad (Greta Lee). Lilypad enters the room of young Bonnie (Scarlett Spears), the little girl who has taken ownership of the toys since their original owner, Andy, went to college back in Toy Story 3 (2010). Her beleaguered parents (Lori Alan and Jay Hernandez) are desperate for her to make friends and realize that all the other pre-tween kids are on devices and use them to communicate. Make no mistake: Toy Story 5 presents the incursion of glowing screens into the world of childhood play as an existential crisis threatening the very nature of childhood itself, which is precisely what makes it so different from the previous four films, all of which assumed that toys brought to life through a kid's imagination would always have a central role in childhood. Now, the allure of glowing pixels quickly pushes aside the more demanding work of pretend and creativity that is required to bring inanimate dolls and figures to life.

While Tom Hanks still receives first billing for voicing the cowboy doll Woody, Toy Story 5 is the first film in the series in which he is not the toy protagonist. Rather, it is the cowgirl Jessie (Joan Cusack) who takes center stage this time around, taking on the very Woody-esque mission of ensuring that Bonnie, her kid, makes some friends, which lands her at the house that just happens to be the same one where her first kid lived many decades earlier. Her goal is to connect Bonnie with the imaginative girl who now lives there, and she is aided and abetted by a trio of discarded technological toys led by Smarty Pants (Conan O'Brien), a device originally designed to aid in toilet training (all the ensuing potty jokes must be the sole reason for the film's PG rating, the first of the series). There are also subplots about Buzz Lightyear's (Tim Allen) long delayed plan to propose to Jessie and Woody's return from being out in the wild as a "lost toy." We also get plenty of jokes and gags that demonstrate the filmmakers' recognition of how long this series has been going (the primary one being the bright glare of the "bald spot" on the back of Woody's head). The familiarity of the characters makes the film easy to slide into, but the heady subject matter tackled by writer/directors Andrew Stanton, a Pixar and Toy Story franchise veteran, and newcomer McKenna Harris, stick with you.

Unfortunately, Toy Story 5 is faced with reconciling an unsolvable problem, in that tablets are presented as a threat to the very nature of play, but are also recognized as a now inescapable part of normal childhood. The film shows us disturbing scenes of children glued to blue-glowing screens like zombies trapped inside their respective houses, but then it has to turn around and somehow find a happy confluence of technological and analogue play, which it does by having Lilypad recognize the error of her ways and be forgiven and brought into the fold—not as a replacement for the old toys, but rather as one of them whose processor and programming can augment the old ways, not eradicate them. It is an optimistic, although probably willfully naïve, solution that allows the film to draw to a close, but is hardly reassuring for those who see the battle up close and personal.

Copyright © 2026 James Kendrick

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