Toy Story 5 dazzles on screen, feels lifeless

Toy Story 5 delivers the kind of polished, glitch-free family entertainment Pixar is known for, but the story’s emotional engine—especially the theme of mortality—doesn’t hit with the force of earlier entries. The film also leans on a creeping idea about addic

There’s a moment in Toy Story 5 where everything looks perfectly built—clean frames. smooth pacing. high-energy craft—like a new device that has never known a glitch. But inside that immaculate surface, the movie feels drained. The jeopardy doesn’t land. The novelty won’t stick. And for a franchise that used to make kids and parents brace for change. the core weight—mortality—lands underpowered. even when the film tries to stir it.

The story brings in a creepy tablet-like gadget called Lilypad. voiced by Greta Lee. that enters a child’s world with the promise of connection. It’s ultimately framed as something capable of sentimental self-sacrificial heroism when it comes to a kid’s mental health. Yet the movie’s moral logic doesn’t quite overcome a bigger worry: the film is at its most pointed when it turns to how addictive tech devices can undermine imaginative play built around honest-to-goodness toys.

Toy Story 5 returns to familiar territory—tousled, warmly chaotic toy life when kids aren’t looking. Jessie the cowgirl (Joan Cusack) is still tied to Bonnie. Scarlett Spears’s character from the fourth movie. alongside Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen). Buzz remains the astronaut with a sheepish, enduring love for Jessie. And Woody. cowboy hero Jessie has long been balanced against. is now living away from them in a feral outdoor existence beyond human control. Tom Hanks voices Woody, and Annie Potts voices Bo Peep, with whom Woody is romantically paired.

Even the humans have started to feel distant inside the toy universe. Woody has a bald patch and a growing paunch—very human fallibilities that. frustratingly. don’t seem to affect Buzz or Jessie in the same way. The movie treats that mismatch as a given. not a pressure point. and it dulls the tension that used to come so naturally to this franchise.

Bonnie. meanwhile. is ostracized for being. as the story frames it. the only kid nearby who still plays with toys and isn’t hypnotized by a tech device. When she gets Lilypad, she’s thrilled at first by connecting with other girls. Then the film pivots into cruelty: online bullying. temptation. and a world that pulls her away from the kinds of play that once made the toys feel safe to believe in.

As that conflict plays out. the movie also introduces a new hero pathway—complicated enough to feel like it requires a rogue platoon of upgraded Buzzes to untangle it. The result is a meet-cute with Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris), a horse lover and toy enthusiast who lives on a farm. Blaze could have been a natural best-friend addition for Bonnie, but the film’s emotional insistence still feels uneven.

From there, Toy Story 5 leans into a “new modest-hero gang” made of obsolete battery-powered proto-tech devices with LCD displays. One of them, toilet trainer Smarty Pants, is voiced by Conan O’Brien. Their narrative function is framed as introducing the idea that tech maybe isn’t all bad—an argument the movie wants to make even as it keeps casting modern devices as a threat.

For many people. the franchise’s real emotional signature has always been its ability to turn love into fear without turning it into cynicism. Toy Story 5 circles back to the legendary moment from Toy Story 2 when Jessie sings “When She Loved Me. ” Randy Newman’s heartbreaking song about an owner who has fallen out of love. The memory of that song is brought back in Toy Story 5 both as a plot point revived and resolved. and also through a prominent new song by Taylor Swift that echoes the same kind of sting—only to resolve the underlying storyline in what the review calls a spurious and unsatisfying way.

Put simply, the film remembers how to press the franchise’s biggest emotional button. But when it does, the payoff doesn’t match the buildup.

There’s a deeper problem at work too: Toy Story 5 is more than 30 years old for a series that once felt like it was always discovering new ways to tell the truth about growing up. The movie now plays like an IP that has run hot and is trying to keep up appearances. It’s out with the glossy sheen of a modern flagship. but it often feels like it’s running on fumes.

Toy Story 5 is scheduled for release on 18 June in Australia, and 19 June in the UK and US.

Toy Story 5 Pixar Toy Story franchise Lilypad Greta Lee Jessie Joan Cusack Bonnie Scarlett Spears Buzz Lightyear Tim Allen Woody Tom Hanks Bo Peep Annie Potts Blaze Mykal-Michelle Harris Smarty Pants Conan O’Brien Taylor Swift When She Loved Me Randy Newman film review