I think there’s a strong consensus to be made that there was no need for another Toy Story movie. The original trilogy is just about perfect, and nothing Pixar will ever do is likely to equal or exceed Toy Story 3. I can, in my own head, justify Toy Story 4 as a quieter epilogue to the first three. But a fifth one? Really? I tend to trust Pixar, but they’re been pushing it lately. I don’t expect any studio to always create genius works or anything, but the studio is past its prime these days. What can I expect from a fifth film in a franchise that should have stopped with three? Not counting the Lightyear spin-off…
I mean, I did go to see Toy Story 5, but the movie needs to justify its own existence at this point.
Wait, I think the movie might have actually justified its existence.
Young Bonnie (voice of Scarlett Spears) has a small problem: she has no friends to play with. Bonnie still plays with toys, and when a concerned Jessie (Joan Cusack) heads out with Bullseye to find a playmate for Bonnie, she learns from other discarded toys that screens and tech have taken over the attention of children everywhere. Bonnie’s parents, seeing how lonely their shy daughter is, order her a tablet, a Lilypad named Lily (Greta Lee). Lily has ideas on how to help Bonnie make friends, and those plans don’t include the toys’ help. Dejected, Jessie puts out a call to Woody (Tom Hanks), but thanks to some general confusion caused by a lovesick Buzz (Tim Allen), Woody gets the idea that he needs to come back and help.
However, Buzz and Woody are actually supporting characters this time around. This is Jessie’s mission, and she has her own ideas on how to help Bonnie because a toy’s sole purpose is to provide happiness for a child no matter how short that time is. That mission takes Jessie and Bullseye to an unexpected place, where they need to team up with some discarded tech-toys, and maybe find Bonnie a friend, all while Lily plots to see to it that she gets Bonnie friends her way. With Woody and Buzz trying to figure out how to get around Lily, and a small squad of Buzz toys working their way to “Star Command,” the real question may not be whether or not Jessie can prevail against Lily but whether either of them can do what they set out to do: help Bonnie find a friend.
In many ways, this movie is a rehash of the original Toy Story, only with Jessie in the Woody role. However, Woody in that movie acted out of jealousy, and in Jessie’s case, it’s more complicated than that. As the movie reminds us, Jessie has an owner before Andy, a girl named Emily, and Jessie has in the past shown flashes of extreme fear of abandonment. As for Lily, she isn’t evil so much as a rival who wants the same thing, but done the way she knows how. Toy Story as a franchise doesn’t often have evil antagonists among the toys themselves, 3‘s Lotso being a prime exception. Often, the antagonist in these movies is just someone who needs to learn to work with the protagonist, and that’s a lesson the protagonists might need to learn as well.
The bottom line here is Toy Story 5, while nowhere near as good as the first three, is a step up from the fourth movie. It has some moving moments, really gets into what toys would actually want, and has some pointed commentary about how invested people, not just children, are in screens and tech. I think we would have been fine if Pixar never opted to make a fifth movie here, but if it does, this is a good way to go while examining how play continues to evolve over time.
Plus, between this one and Hoppers, Pixar had a pretty good year in 2026.
Grade: B+
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