On Screen: “Toy Story 5”
Toy Story 5
The battle for playtime begins as traditional toys encounter tech in “Toy Story 5,” reuniting Woody (Tom Hanks) and Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), along with the rest of the CGI team, 31 years after they first burst onto the silver screen.
Shy, eight-year-old Bonnie (Scarlett Spears) loves the fantasy world she shares with plucky cowgirl Jessie (Joan Cusack) and her trusty steed, Bullseye (Alan Cumming), but she has trouble making friends with kids in the neighborhood.
Because they don’t play with toys anymore. They’re glued to their digital devices.
So Bonnie’s concerned parents buy her a frog-themed LilyPad (Greta Lee), a kid-friendly starter tablet. Sure enough — shortly after joining a chat group, Bonnie is invited to her very first sleepover with girls from her dance class.
But it’s a disaster! Bonnie is scorned when Jessie and Bullseye sneak into her suitcase. For these ‘mean girls’ approaching adolescence, the age of toys is over!
Rejected Jessie and Bullseye wind up with horse-loving, nine-year-old Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris) at a farm where Jessie once lived. And it will take all their courage and ingenuity to reignite Bonnie’s love of imaginative playdates by forging a friendship between her and Blaze.
Joining aging Sheriff Woody, spaceman Buzz and the gang (Forky, Bo Peep, Rex, Hamm, Slinky Dog, Mr. Potato-Head) in this endeavor are a trio of obsolete, discarded low-tech devices: potty trainer Smarty Pants (Conan O’Brien), kiddie camera Snappy (Shelby Rabara) and GPS hippo Atlas (Craig Robbinson), along with an army of ‘high tech’ Buzz Lightyear action figures, dumped from a cargo container.
Amid covert missions and contrived chases, writer-director Andrew Stanton (“Wall-E” — and the voice of Blaze’s pig Jimmy Dean), teamed with Kenna Harris, tackle the understandable fear of obsolescence and abandonment, noting: “Toys are for play … but tech is for everything” — concluding with the poignant, pastoral image of a tire swing dangling from a tree.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Toy Story 5” is a perceptive, endearing 8 — playing in theaters. Stay for Taylor Swift’s catchy “I Knew It, I Knew You” song during the credits, followed by an additional, utterly delightful surprise scene.
Susan Granger is a product of Hollywood. Her natural father, S. Sylvan Simon, was a director and producer at M.G.M. and Columbia Pictures. Her adoptive father, Armand Deutsch, produced movies at M.G.M.
As a child, Susan appeared in movies with Abbott & Costello, Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Margaret O’Brien, and Lassie. She attended Mills College in California, studying journalism with Pierre Salinger, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism.