Toy Story 5 Forgot How to Play

Some movies ask you to suspend your disbelief.  Toy Story asked you to believe your toys had a better social life than you did.

Somehow, we all did.

Long before there was a Toy Story 5, there was a Woody in my hands, a Buzz on my brother’s shelf, and a movie that reminded us imagination doesn’t come with an age limit.  Years later, Toy Story became only the third DVD I ever bought.  That’s how much I loved that movie.  The original Toy Story pulled off something almost impossible.  It convinced us that a cowboy doll, a space ranger and a room full of plastic toys could teach us something about friendship.  It was about the simple joy of believing your toys came alive the moment you left the room.  Every time I hear Randy Newman’s You’ve Got a Friend in Me, I’m instantly back in Andy’s bedroom.

Did we need Toy Story 2?  Probably not.  But watching Woody and Buzz evolve from rivals into true friends was worth it.  Toy Story 3?  I’ll admit it got me.  Watching the toys clasp each other’s hands at the edge of the incinerator wasn’t emotional because they were about to melt.  It was emotional because they’d spent three movies earning that moment.

Ironically, yesterday was my last day at work before summer vacation.  Customer after customer stopped by just to wish me a great holiday.  Somewhere along the way, they stopped being customers and became friends.  It reminded me that friendship never goes out of style.  Which is precisely why Toy Story 5 feels so out of touch.

For a franchise built on friendship, this movie seems to forget that Woody and Buzz are best friends.  Instead, we get The Jessie Show while Woody and Buzz end up feeling like guest stars in their own franchise.  Meanwhile, Woody gets a poncho and a joke about going bald, and Buzz gets a subplot that feels like it wandered in from another Pixar movie.  Both toys spend so much time on the sidelines you’d think they were being load-managed for the playoffs.  Then there’s Lilypad, essentially a LeapFrog tablet with an inflated opinion of itself.  The movie spends nearly two hours wagging its finger at technology before quietly deciding technology isn’t so bad after all.

But that’s not the biggest problem.  The biggest problem is that Pixar forgot the one thing it used to do better than anyone else.  Make playing look fun.  Somewhere along the way Pixar stopped asking, “Wouldn’t this be fun?” and started asking, “What’s the message?”  Pixar didn’t lose its imagination.  It just stopped trusting it.  Most disappointingly during this movie I never once wanted to go home, pull my old toys out of storage and start playing again.  The original Toy Story made you want to empty your toy box onto the bedroom floor.  Toy Story 5 made me want to empty my popcorn bucket and leave.

The best Toy Story movies were never really about toys.  They were about us.  About loyalty.  About imagination.  About the friends who make ordinary moments unforgettable.  Children don’t fall in love with lessons.  They fall in love with adventures.  For awhile Toy Story understood that.  Because at its heart, it was never just about toys coming to life.  It was about what happens when friendship does.

Toy Story 5 remembered the toys, but forgot why we loved them.