We were a little late to Toy Story 5, catching it new to streaming rather than in its June theatrical run, but we both came away thinking it was a real rebound after Toy Story 4. Matt watched it twice to prepare and gave it four stars; Jeff was a bit cooler at three and a half. Either way, we both slot it fourth out of five Toy Story movies, ahead of only the fourth film.
The technology question
The movie's real subject is screens. Bonnie is getting older and trying to make new friends, and the story leans hard into how much phones and tablets now shape that, with a tablet called Lilypad standing in for the smart devices kids actually carry. Jessie spends the movie trying to keep Bonnie playing with toys instead; Buzz and Woody are just as anti-tech.
Matt liked that the writing feels sharper than recent Pixar, which he credits to Andrew Stanton, who co-wrote the story and also wrote WALL-E and Finding Nemo. He also thought the parents in this one read as more authentic than the constant coddling he felt from Toy Story 4. One scene hit close to home for both of us: Bonnie comes back from a sleepover where every other kid stayed on a device the whole night, and she's noticeably deflated. Both of us have seen some version of that in our own homes.
Jeff's take was a little more conflicted. He liked that the movie takes the subject seriously, but felt it tries to have it both ways, half warning about technology and half accepting it as inevitable, before landing on a conclusion he actually agrees with: technology works fine as a tool for play and in-person friendship, but not as a replacement for it. He connected the sleepover scene to a real concern about kids' mental health, while owning that he reaches for his own phone in social situations more than he'd like to admit.
The rest of the notebook
A few other things came up that didn't fit anywhere else:
- Matt isn't sold on the subplot with a large group of Buzz Lightyear toys, which he felt existed mostly to set up the ending rather than for its own sake.
- Both of us noticed the Toy Story franchise's long-running logic problem, toys that supposedly never move when people are watching somehow relocating themselves constantly, and had some fun with it here.
- Jeff's biggest complaint was the voice work. Joan Cusack has voiced Jessie since Toy Story 2, and Jeff felt her performance in this one was noticeably rougher, which is a bigger problem now that Jessie is effectively the lead. He's skeptical a Toy Story 6 is workable with the original cast at this point.
- Jeff was surprised the movie is sitting around 93-94% on Rotten Tomatoes, since his own score came in well under that.
Toy Story 5 isn't going to unseat the original trilogy for either of us, but it's a legitimate bounce-back, and one of the more honest attempts we've seen at putting a real parenting debate on screen. Hear the full conversation, along with our review of Paths of Glory and our top five Spielberg films, on episode 3.