Toy Story 5 – which pits cowgirl Jessie, plus Buzz Lightyear, Woody and the rest of the gang against the villainous tablet Lilypad – couldn’t have been released at a more appropriate time in the UK, with a new ban on social media for under-16s announced just this week and a rising tide of concern about childhoods lost to tech.
This extraordinary 31-year-old franchise has always grown with its audience, and film five, the first film directed by the series’ co-writer Andrew Stanton, is dripping with anxiety about zombified kids glued to their screens, mute and siloed at sleepovers, already fearful of online Fomo at the tender age of eight. “The age of toys is over!” shrieks a discarded plastic figurine, lying in the dirt. “Oh, the tapping!” shivers another, as he recalls tablets in terror. It’s a digital horror movie that will have you ripping devices out of your kids’ hands (although if they’re watching too, they’ll probably hand them over willingly).
But if you’re worried about some didactic, anti-screens lecture, fear not. Toy Story 5 is also a magnificent, heartfelt family film, with all the zany comedy, camaraderie and tear-jerking nostalgia it has always had. Bonnie (Scarlett Spears), the child to whom Andy donated his toys at the end of Toy Story 3, is an imaginative but shy kid struggling to make friends – a challenge not helped by the local children’s obsession with their devices. Hoping it might help, her reluctant parents buy her a tablet, the green know-it-all Lilypad (Greta Lee), who, like a too-cool-for-school older sibling, insists that she knows what’s best for Bonnie: online gaming and friending (yikes).
