★★★★

In a post-Andy world, the heart and soul of the Toy Story saga ended sixteen years ago, all since rendered adjunctive. The Bonnie years have yet to drop the ball but lack necessity. Where Toy Story 4 charted life post-Andy imitatively, however, the fifth does stray from the beaten path. Just a smidge. Toy Story 5 may feel no more essential than its 2019 predecessor but the film does, at least, boast a certain tonal distinction. For the first time in thirty years, Randy Newman doesn’t sing. Oh, and Tom Hanks’ Woody is no longer the lead.

The two points are connected, each the marker of a changing guard. Sure enough, it’s not until Woody finally returns to eight-year-old Bonnie’s bedroom, some twenty minutes in, that Toy Story 5 finally drops a bar of franchise theme “You Got a Friend in Me.” It’s a legacy beat now, rather than core identity. Before then, Newman’s score majored in the melody of 1999 Sarah McLachlan heartbreaker “When Somebody Loved Me” – soundtrack to a thousand Toy Story 2 tears. A quarter century on – and in a very Pixar way – the film pursues closure for everyone’s favourite red-haired ragdoll. This is a Jessie story.

In many a sense, Andrew Stanton’s story feels familiar. For one, it builds on the same themes of adolescent inevitability that haunted the second and third in the series. The lifespan of a toy is inherently time limited and it has always been the want of Toy Story to wrack grownups with grief for our casual abandonment of childhood favourites. What Stanton does well is to update the narrative with more contemporary concern. A toy today need not fear replacement by a space ranger, not when a tablet or smartphone proves far more pernicious a threat. As Woody has it himself: ‘Toys are for play but tech is for everything…’

Such is the crisis that faces Jessie (Joan Cusack) and co. when a frog themed tablet called Lilypad (voiced by Greta Lee) finds its way into the arms of shy, lonely Bonnie. ‘The age of toys is over’ cry the ditched and dispossessed as screens glow from windows up and down the street. It might feel old guard and preachy were it not so depressingly true. All told, Stanton stumbles here, never quite prepared to villainise the tablet. Perhaps not so surprising given Pixar’s own (Steve Jobs shaped) culpability in the tech-takeover. Instead, the trajectory recalls Inside Out 2, with more than a little of Anxiety to Lilypad’s motivations and arc. When Bonnie wants for friends to play with, Lilypad’s social media know-how means well but has some very predictable, very unpleasant consequences.

Lilypad’s not the only new electronic on the scene, mind. Conan O’Brian has fun with a long redundant potty training device – “Smarty Pants” – and an entertaining subplot finds several dozen next-gen Buzz Lightyears on the hunt for Star Command from a cargo shipwreck. Other newbies include a GPS hippo, an amusingly named pig and one more lonely little girl in need of a playmate. The cast expansion does rather relegate old favourites to glorified cameos – there’s little room for Slinky, Rex and the Potato Heads – while continuing the prevailing sense that this isn’t quite the Toy Story you grew up or old with.

Not inconsiderable contrivance is required to draw the various strands together – particularly given the surprising final destination – but the effort never feels strenuous. Strip away the excess and you’re left with a very funny, genuinely touching and superlatively animated legacy adventure. Perhaps the voices creak rather more than you remember. Maybe each reunion loses another face. We’ll still turn up. Necessary? No. Nice, though.

T.S.