As an animated film Toy Story 5 is an incredible accomplishment, beautiful, vibrant animation that ranks amongst the best that the medium (especially computer animation) has achieved. Everything is rendered with such fidelity and exquisite motion that it’s very easy to forget that these characters that we’ve known for over thirty years don’t exist. Mannerisms and expressions are now able to be conveyed with much more subtlety, even by the non-humanoid toys. The lighting too is spectacular with each time of day bathed in gorgeous rays of light, the outdoor scenes are a real highlight. It’s a shame then that the film is so pedestrian in the film’s locations and set pieces, set mainly in houses that look decidedly bland. Gone is the dizzying sense of scale that made the early films seem so spectacular and made the world feel almost alien (similar to 1989’s Honey I Shrunk the Kids). Toy Story 4 had its detractors but the film had some beautiful locations, such as the carnival and antique shop that were explored in interesting ways, the sequel struggles to make anything feel massive. This sense of scale extends to the map itself (made more prominent by multiple GPS devices mapping the routes of the characters) which is made tiny by the reveal that most of the Toy Story films have existed just a few streets away. For convenience everything has been condensed and it makes the universe feel so small to justify some plot reveals.

This contrivance is perhaps Toy Story 5’s biggest flaw and one that makes its existence the most difficult to justify. These characters have said their tearful farewells and we’ve seen natural conclusions to their story so to see Woody dragged back into the frame without meaningfully contributing to the story shows an unfounded lack of confidence in the remaining cast of characters. Jessie is the star of this film and Cusack’s vocal performance is stellar, with a rich and textured delivery. The actress who has unfairly been relegated to supporting cast for most of her career truly shines as Jessie and gives appropriate weight to the film’s emotional beast. Excellent too are Spears and Harris as the young girls, their isolation heartbreakingly realised and it’s genuinely upsetting to hear Bonnie ask why she doesn’t have any friends. It’s the legacy characters of Buzz and Woody who struggle to justify their inclusion, Buzz spending the film looking for an opportunity to propose to Jessie and Woody contributing nothing but jokes about his advancing age (some of which simply don’t make sense). Ridiculous also is the implementation of tech within the story which strains credulity as we watch an ancient potty training toy manage to send a message to a tablet simply because they use the same operating system.