Toy Story 5 Review: A Bold New Chapter for the Gang?

The familiar pull of a child’s imagination meets the cold glow of a screen. When Bonnie receives a Lilypad tablet from her tech-savvy aunt, her playtime ritual shifts from blocks and balsa wood to swiping and tapping. Woody, Buzz, and the gang find themselves sidelined, watching their kid’s attention drain into a colorful, interactive app called “PlayVerse.” The toys’ crisis? They’ve been replaced by artificial playmates-digital avatars that never need winding, never get dusty, and never need bedtime. But when the tablet’s operating system, an unnervingly chipper AI named Lilypad (voiced by Greta Lee with smug warmth), begins actively discouraging traditional play, Woody and Buzz launch a mission to remind Bonnie that imagination doesn’t need a screen. Their journey takes them from the family’s newly renovated living room-a maze of charging cables and “vibration sensitivity zones”-to a secret server room in the school’s computer lab. Along the way, they encounter Smarty Pants (Conan O’Brien), a hilariously pedantic digital tutor, and Atlas (Craig Robinson), a glitchy cloud-storage guardian who speaks in corrupted file names.

Let’s start with the obvious: a Toy Story movie about screen addiction in 2026 could feel like a lecture or a gimmick. Stanton, who returns to the director’s chair for the first time since Finding Dory, avoids both traps. He treats the tablet not as a villain but as a symptom-a shiny, seductive object that offers convenience at the cost of connection. The script, credited to Stanton, Pete Docter, and a rotating team of Pixar veterans, mines genuine pathos from the idea that a child’s love can be algorithmically optimized. When Lilypad’s avatar coos to Bonnie, “You don’t need to clean up after me,” you feel the gut punch for the toys who’ve always cleaned up after themselves.

Tom Hanks and Tim Allen haven’t lost a step. Woody’s earnestness is now tinged with a slight weariness-he’s a sheriff facing an enemy he can’t lasso. Buzz, still delightfully literal, has been reprogrammed to believe the tablet is “a portal to a digital dimension” and tries to call for backup using a shattered screen. Their banter, especially during a deliriously fun sequence where Buzz tries to “hack” the Lilypad by pressing his own button repeatedly, recalls the best of the earlier films. Joan Cusack’s Jessie gets a standout moment when she realizes she can’t outrun Wi-Fi, and Tony Hale’s Forky remains the series’ secret emotional weapon-here, he worries that his “trash-to-treasure” origin story is now obsolete in an age of disposable content.

The new characters are a mixed bag. Greta Lee’s Lilypad is a perfect foil: never overtly malevolent, just patronizingly efficient. Her voice drips with a “better than you” calm that makes you root for her downfall. Conan O’Brien’s Smarty Pants, a know-it-all e-reader who recites copyright laws instead of fairy tales, steals every scene-his rapid-fire, self-aware rants land like vintage Late Night monologues. But Craig Robinson’s Atlas, designed as a lovable lug of a data keeper, feels underwritten; his big moment involves a monologue about “deleting old memories” that lands with a thud. Shelby Rabara’s Snappy, a sentient emoji, is mostly a one-joke character that overstays her welcome.

Visually, the film is a stunner. Pixar’s animation team has outdone itself rendering the tablet’s interior-a slick, reflective landscape of icons, notification bubbles, and “loading” spirals that look like digital fireflies. The contrast between the warm, handcrafted textures of the toys and the cold, seamless surfaces of the Lilypad is deliberate and effective. One sequence, where Woody climbs a literal “home screen” stack of apps, is a masterclass in scale and tension-it feels like The Incredibles’ island infiltration, but played out on a five-inch screen.

Where the film stumbles is in its third act. The climax, set inside the school’s server room, relies on a convoluted plan involving “resetting” the tablet’s permissions via a physical plug. It’s visually busy but emotionally thin-the stakes feel abstract compared to, say, the incinerator scene in Toy Story 3. For a film that argues for tactile connection, the resolution feels oddly disconnected from the characters’ physicality. There’s a beautiful, quiet moment between Woody and Bonnie at the very end-she looks at him, then at the tablet, and he says, “I can wait.” That’s the soul of the movie. But to get there, you have to sit through a moderately over-rehearsed action finale that might have worked better as a quieter confrontation.

The TMDb rating of 7.4/10 feels about right-this is a good Toy Story film, but not a great one. It’s smarter than Toy Story 4, funnier than Toy Story 2, and more thematically ambitious than Toy Story 3. But it lacks that last punch of dramatic inevitability. Still, for a series that could have easily coasted on nostalgia, Toy Story 5 earns its right to exist.

Pros

• Hanks and Allen’s chemistry remains effortless and deeply moving
• Greta Lee’s Lilypad is a refreshing, low-key antagonist
• Conan O’Brien’s Smarty Pants is a genuine comedic highlight
• Pixar’s visual design of the digital world is breathtaking
• The film tackles screen addiction without preaching-it sympathizes with kids and parents alike

Cons

• Third act is over-reliant on action set-pieces rather than emotional stakes
• Craig Robinson’s Atlas feels underutilized and forgettable
• Snappy the emoji is a grating, one-note character
• Forky’s existential shtick grows thin in his second outing
• The conclusion, while sweet, lacks the cathartic gut-punch of the franchise’s best moments

Toy Story 5 is a welcome, intelligent, and visually stunning entry into the canon-a film that understands the toys’ greatest enemy isn’t a greedy collector or a sadistic child, but a simple glowing rectangle that promises endless fun without any. It doesn’t hit the transcendent heights of Toy Story 3, and its third act loses focus, but the core of the film is true: play is human, and love is analog. For families and nostalgia-seekers alike, this is a solid, satisfying sequel. Bring tissues-and maybe leave your own Lilypad in another room.

Rating: ★★★★ (4 out of 5)
Hollywood Buzz News approves-stream it, but then go play catch with your kid.