Brief Story Line
After the events of Toy Story 4, Bonnie (Scarlett Spears - General Hospital TV series etc) was still playing with her toys who were now led by newly appointed Sheriff Jessie (Joan Cusack - Working Girl, Nine Months etc) and her Deputy Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen - The Santa Clause, Last Man Standing TV series etc). When Bonnie's parents bought her a new tablet called Lilypad, Jessie was worried that the tablet Lily (Greta Lee - Tron: Ares, The Morning Show TV series etc) would make Bonnie completely ignore the toys.
While trying to help Bonnie making new friends, Jessie was somehow stranded in the house of young girl named Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris - Mixed-ish TV series etc) and met with electronic devices like Smarty Pants (Conan O'Brien - Weird: The Al Yankovic Story etc) and his friends Snappy (Shelby Rabara - Me & My Grandma TV series etc) & Atlas (Craig Robinson - My Spy: The Eternal City etc). Feeling worried about Jessie, Buzz decided to look for her and reluctantly accept the help from Woody (Tom Hanks - News of the World, Inferno etc) who specifically returned to assist.
So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Just like when watching the previous film, I thought that the Woody & Buzz story would have been finished already with its conclusion. But once again I was proven mistaken as this movie still managed to pull off another great story that resonate well with the current condition. I got to admire the writers team as they were able to clearly show distinct difference of playing with toys and tablets, though there was one dialogue smartly inserted to avoid completely disregarding the importance of technology.
In this film, the focus of the story was on Jessie, though Buzz and Woody still provide main support. However, the rest of the toys were reduced to provide few one liners which were still pretty funny. There were new characters in the form of gadgets who were quite pleasing to see and a certain group of rather hilarious toys that seemed irrelevant in the beginning but were later shown their importance. The animation were still as beautiful as ever with so many detail expressions, movements and so on that looked really realistic and the voice acting were just brilliant adding depth to the emotions. Nevertheless, despite its awesome & heartwarming story, I felt that it was not as emotional as before. Sure there were still some touching scenes that affected audience (my wife in particular), but personally it was rather brief and not that many.
This latest installment was directed by Andrew Stanton who was director of the amazing Finding Dory, Wall-E and few others. He was also credited as the co-writer together with McKenna Harris who was also co-director. As Stanton was the writer for all previous Toy Story movies, I have no doubt he was the right person to be appointed to provide another story. In fact I read today that he already got something in his mind about possibility of future story. I guess I'll have to get used to the idea that as long as there are still people playing with toys, there would still be another movie of it, unless of course if people got really bored and no one sees the film anymore. For now though, it's looking good for the franchise as it's going to be a big win for Disney & Pixar in term of box office, plus it is well received by critics too.
A lot of the cast from previous movies reprised their roles here including those aside from the ones I said above such as Tony Hale (Inside Out 2 etc) as Forky, Annie Potts (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire etc) as Bo Peep, Wallace Shawn (The Addams Family 2 etc) as Rex and many more. In addition, there were also appearance of Ernie Hudson (Quantum Leap 2002 TV series etc) as Combat Carl, Jay Hernandez (Magnum P. I. 2018 TV series etc) and Lori Alan (SpongeBob SquarePants TV series etc) as Bonnie's parents plus several others in support roles. The movie itself has 102 minutes including closing credits which was accompanied by Taylor Swift's song titled I Knew It, I Knew You. There was also a well done mid end-credit scene plus a rather funny brief post end scene.
Overall my wife and I had fun seeing this movie in the cinema yesterday. It has wonderful story that is totally relevant with current condition, beautiful animation and a nice conclusion. The ending did not really feel like a chapter closing but rather the beginning of another story, so I guess future sequels would likely be done. So if you still want to find joy watching these toys come to life with an ever expanding characters, then you certainly would still be entertained by this film. Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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