The gang’s all here again in “Toy Story 5,” Pixar’s latest, far from greatest, adventure about a collective of children’s playthings. There’s Woody, of course, the long-faced, loose-limbed cowboy whom Tom Hanks has voiced since time immemorial, a.k.a. 1995, when the first movie in the series opened. Back then, Woody was the kindly king of his range, a charmed world in which toys magically come to walking, talking life when humans aren’t around. Like his fellow inhabitants, Woody then belonged to Andy, a sweet boy who broke hearts — onscreen and off — as he grew older, and began to put away his supposed childish things.
By the end of the fourth movie, Andy was a fading memory, Woody was in the wild — having embraced the identity of a “lost toy” — and the rest of the prefab playmates were at home with another youngster, Bonnie. Now voiced by Scarlett Spears, Bonnie is the ostensible center of this new movie, though, as in the past, the story focuses more on her playthings, their sense of their own purpose and how they navigate their home life and the larger world. Much like their children, the toys need to negotiate fears and existential threats through trial and error, and while they can seem near-indestructible, time has predictably taken its toll.
That’s certainly true of Woody, who pops into Bonnie’s bedroom for a complicated reunion with pals, including his best bud, Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), a dim bulb in a bubble helmet. From the outside, Woody seems much the same despite the handkerchief draped over his body like a poncho. It’s a look that evokes Clint Eastwood’s “Man With No Name” gunslinger in the Sergio Leone westerns, an allusion that seems more directed at film nerds than most normal grown-ups. Each constituency may also chuckle at Woody’s substantial paunch and his bald spot, the consequence of much hat-doffing. Time is, yet again, on the menu in “Toy Story 5,” though in ways that the crew behind the scenes never satisfyingly manages.
The director Andrew Stanton (whose credits include “Wall-E”) has been involved in the making of all the movies in the series and here, with the co-director Kenna Harris, he has cooked up a story that again revisits some big questions. On its cheery face, this is a movie about an imaginative, acutely shy child who yearns for human friendship. It’s about loneliness and wanting to belong. It’s also about some of the complex themes — play, individuality, obsolescence, consumerism — that this series has taken up, both glibly and touchingly, from the start. Among the most harrowingly topical now is how people hold onto their humanity in the age of technocapitalism, even as it reduces individuals to commercially exploitable data.
In other words, Bonnie gets a tablet. Called Lilypad, it is a cute-ish gadget (Greta Lee), at least from the outside, with a green bezel topped by a smile and two gaga eyes. It looks like a frog swallowed an iPad or maybe the reverse, and while that sounds as creepy as its authoritarian demand (“Let’s play!”), Bonnie is soon as zombified by its screen as the other tots across the city, their faces bathed in eerie blue-white light. The machines have come for the children, which upends Bonnie’s toys, including her favorite, Jessie (Joan Cusack), a cowgirl. Like Woody, Jessie has a pull string and looks like she was manufactured when the filmmakers were kids (or older); like him, she is very capable of coming to the rescue.
The cast adds bounce and pathos to their words; one of the more genuinely poignant things about this movie is that while time has only lightly scuffed the toys themselves over these many years, you can hear its passing in the voices of the performers, Hanks and Allen in particular. Cusack’s vocal performance, with its Chicago flavor and clipped enunciation, is also a treat and sings even when the dialogue doesn’t. Bonnie is a sympathetic character, but the filmmakers seem only marginally interested in her, which shows. It’s no wonder that the most emotionally and visually vivid sequences involve Jessie, including in a few flashbacks and in some striking animated play sessions that look like they were hand drawn in pastel.
There is only so far that the filmmakers — who work, after all, at a famously technologically innovative studio — can push this story. And so, predictably, they simply stop pushing and instead wiggle around the thornier issues while spending too much time on another dreary Pixar romance. More happily, Stanton and team introduce a few other newcomers, including a plucky girl, Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris), who has a halo of springy hair and her own toys, an action figurine in what looks like a pink tutu included. Blaze adds a welcome jolt to the proceedings, which, despite some high-flying moves, never achieve liftoff. It’s fine, pretty and amusing, but if no one’s heart seems in it, perhaps it’s time to make way for other toys.
Toy Story 5 Rated PG for mild peril and existential despair. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters.
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