TOY STORY 5

July 31 – Aug 6

Fri July 31 – 3:30 & 7:00 pm
Sat August 1 – 1:30 & 7:00 pm
Sun August 2– 1:30 & 7:00 pm
Mon August 3 – 7:00 pm
Tues August 4 – 7:00 pm
Wed August 5 – 3:30 pm
Thurs August 6 – 7:00 pm LAST SHOW

Rated PG – 1hr 42min
Family / Comedy / Adventure / Animation

Pixar’s Toy Story series has always been at home with wistfulness and melancholy, because the nature of toys means their time is fleeting and their worth ephemeral. If the cowboy doll is not displaced by a spaceman, he will still be rendered obsolete by adolescence and adulthood, however hard he tries to enchant and entertain. The first three films taught us that the work is still meaningful even if the love is finite, but the fourth struggled for a similarly powerful theme. This latest outing, however, is a welcome return to philosophical form as well as being funny, warm-hearted and largely optimistic.

Though Toy Story 5 is a continuation of Woody and Buzz’s adventures in humanland, it is also a poignant exploration of what it’s like for kids to grow up in a world where they’re often encouraged to experience life through screens. The movie frames tech as an almost inescapable element of our reality that can hurt us in ways that outweigh its potential benefits. But its story highlights how — for all of tech’s potential to do harm — we still have the ability to choose when and how we let newfangled devices into our personal lives.

The challenge the toys face now, as director and writer Andrew Stanton and co-director and co-screenwriter Kenna Harris make clear, is existential. Screen-time threatens to conquer all: it not only monopolises time that would have been spent with physical amusements but could displace imaginative play entirely in favour of structured games. Even the gang’s owner, Bonnie (Scarlett Spears), is not immune to its lure when she gets a new Lilypad tablet, voiced by Greta Lee.

One of the film’s best recurring jokes is the way that Jessie and company have more freedom to run around because people are too busy scrolling on their devices to notice groups of sentient toys gallivanting through the bushes. Technology’s ubiquity gives all of Bonnie’s toys a very real reason to feel like they’re becoming irrelevant. But rather than leaning into the idea that all devices are inherently bad, Toy Story 5 emphasizes the importance of remembering that our experiences with new gadgets are defined by how we choose to use them.

Andrew Stanton, the fabled Pixar director of the loved Wall-E, now takes the reins of a Toy Story film for the first time (though he worked on all the others), and he’s made a movie with an ambitious and delicious layer-cake density. Where a lesser film would have made the story a battle between old-school good guys (toys) and new-school bad guy (screens), Toy Story 5 doesn’t demonize tech life so much as depict it as a new metaphysical realm of the kiddie cosmos.

From beginning to end, Toy Story 5 is filled with whimsy, humor, and heart that make it easy for older audiences to connect with their inner child on both playful and emotional levels. The tone is kept light enough with quick gags throughout each storyline, but still carries a sensitive and poignant weight, with the deep empathy expressed for Jessie, Bonnie, Blaze, and Lilypad’s hardships. Though Disney has faced some flack for a reliance on sequels, Toy Story 5 brings everything that could be wanted out of a classic Pixar story to the table.