Yes, it’s an animated film
or, as some old-timers might still refer to such things, a “cartoon”; and it’s
a sequel; in fact, it’s the fourth in a series dating back nearly twenty-five
years (!) to the original Toy Story (released in November 1995). The team at Pixar Animation Studios could
have just phoned it in and made money for parent company Disney, but that is
not the Pixar way. As it turns out, Toy
Story 4 is one of the most entertaining and fully realized movies of
the year to date; and it may be the funniest. Ultimately, it is also one of the
most poignant, emotionally stirring, romantic motion pictures of the year.
I am a huge fan of Pixar
films. Time and again, they produce warm, funny satisfying movies that appeal
to kids and adults alike; films that can thrill us, make us laugh, tug at our
heartstrings, and stimulate our minds. Toy Story 4 is their 21st
feature film. In that group, there have
been only three duds in my estimation [Cars, Cars 2 and Cars 3), and even those
made money. There have also been more than a handful of masterpieces – such as,
The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007), WALL-E (2008),
Up (2009), Toy Story 3 (2010), and Coco (2017. These, comprise
only a partial list of my favorites (and your “best of” list may differ from
mine). Toy Story 4 is another masterwork.
For those unfamiliar with the
Toy Story movies at all, they are about a group of toys owned by, and loved by,
a little boy named Andy. As the Toy Story universe would have it, toys are
inanimate creatures when people are around, but animated personalities the rest
of the time, although they are dependent on interactions with “their” kid for
meaning and fulfillment. Among Andy’s toys, the favorite has long been Woody
(voiced by Tom Hanks) – a mid-century sheriff-cowboy toy that has somehow made
it into the late 20th century (coinciding with the first Toy
Story in 1995) and on into the 21st. Other original characters include Slinky Dog
(originally Jim Varney, later Blake Clark), Mr Potato Head (Don Rickles), Mrs.
Potato Head (Estelle Harris), Rex (a dim Dinosaur, voiced by Wallace Shawn),
Hamm (a pig, voiced by John Ratzenberger) and others.
A significant part of the
story in the first movie has to do with the introduction of a  |
Things take a more serious
turn eleven years later with the arrival of the third installment, Toy Story
3 (2010). There is still plenty of humor, but thematically it’s a darker,
more mature work. Fifteen tears after the original Toy Story, the
animation has also taken great leaps forward, so the look of the picture is
just great. Andy has grown up and is about to go off to college; what will
become of his childhood toys? Will they be thrown in the trash or stored in the
attic – in a possibly endless limbo? Eventually, many are donated to a day care
center, but that’s only the beginning of another harrowing adventure, in which the
gang finds itself locked in a playroom - abused by a bunch of frenzied, heedless
toddlers during the day and by a cabal of toys led by Lotso, a sweet-talking, despotic
teddy bear (Ned Beatty) at night. The situation and the gang’s efforts to
escape are comical and exciting as we’d expect, yet with some troubling
undertones . The film eventually ends on a hopeful note, as Andy gives his toys
to a cute little three-year-old girl, Bonnie, where it would seem they may live
happily ever after - or at least until she grows up.
I don’t want to spend too
much time on the plot of Toy Story 4, which, like its predecessors,
has loads of twists, turns and surprises along with both verbal and visual
humor. Generally, it picks up where Toy Story 3 left off. Although nine years have elapsed since the
last film, only two years have passed in the Toy Story world. Bonnie is now
five. She’s about to start Kindergarten and she’s scared. Woody no longer enjoys
favorite toy status - which has passed to the red-haired cowgirl Jessie (Joan
Cusack) - but his heart still goes out to Bonnie, and he wants to help her somehow.
Indeed, loyalty is Woody’s defining characteristic and, as in Toy Story 3,
a major theme of this picture.
At this point, Toy
Story 4 introduces a surprising and wonderful new character, who is not
only integral to that theme and to the unfolding story, but a major source of the
picture’s comedy, its sense of wonder and its heart. During arts and crafts on
her first day at kindergarten, Bonnie makes herself a little toy out of trashcan
scraps – a discarded plastic fork-spoon thing for its body and head, broken pieces of a popsicle stick for feet, some
stick-on googly eyes, pipe cleaners for arms and a small lump of clay to hold
it all together. Her anxiety and loneliness evaporate, replaced by enthusiasm
and love for her creation. She dubs him Forky. Thanks to the geniuses at Pixar,
Forky quickly earns our affection, too.
The idea of toys becoming real,
which is to say alive, through the love of children has been a story idea at
least since the picture-book classic The Velveteen Rabbit first appeared
in 1922. The wonder of this fantasy – essentially, a sentimental take on the
child’s eye-view of their favorite toys - is the warm and fuzzy core concept
behind all of the Toy Story movies. The first one, Toy Story, kind-of
stood this on its head with the introduction of Buzz Lightyear, who actually
believes that he is a real spaceman until Woody emphatically explains to him, “You-Are-A-TOY!”
Toy Story 4 takes this to the limit by implanting a toy’s consciousness
into Forky, who only moments before was a bunch of refuse, and who, comically,
takes quite a bit of convincing to accept his new reality. In a bit of an
epilogue, shown during the end credits (don’t leave during the credits), Forky
meets a new “toy” made from scraps like himself, who, when no humans are
around, asks the essential question, “How am I alive?” Forky replies with great wonderment, “I don’t
know!” It’s one of conscious man’s most
profound philosophical inquiries, isn’t it? And it certainly is a wonder.
Bonnie’s family takes her
(and her toys) on an RV road trip. It is during the course of this little
vacation that most of the movie’s action occurs. And it’s during the course of
these adventures that we are introduced to a bunch of wonderful new toy
characters. There are the fluffy carnival prizes Ducky and Bunny (Keegan-Michael
Key and Jordan Peele, hilariously riffing in their inimitable style); and Duke
Caboom (Keanu Reeves) a self-doubting hero-type toy modelled after motorcycle
daredevil Evil Knievel, Canadian style. Then
there’s Gabby-Gabby (Christina Hendricks) - like Woody, a mid-century doll (modelled
on the old Chatty Kathy) - who starts out as a nemesis to Woody and pals but
who, unlike most movie antagonists, eventually earns our sympathy and
compassion; and Gabby Gabby’s henchmen: several ventriloquist’s dummies, at
once creepy and comical, and all of whom are called Benson (Steve Purcell). 
Best of all (after Forky, that is) is Bo Peep (Annie
Potts), a reintroduced character from the first two movies in the series, who
along with her three sheep - Billy, Goat and Gruff (Emily Davis) – started out
as part of a child’s desklamp. Bo and Woody had a bit of a romantic connection
in Toy Story, but she was a secondary character in Toy Story 2
and did not appear at all in Toy Story 3. The new movie opens with a
short flashback in which we learn why. During the course of Woody’s adventures
in Toy Story 4, he finds Bo again, and the romantic spark is still there. At
this point Bo has become something of a free agent and very much an independent
woman … er, toy. She is something of an action figure in fact – quick witted, heroic
and, with the aid of her shepherd’s crook, quite formidable. All of which comes
in handy for Andy, who often seems bewildered and overmatched on his own. 
Bo also epitomizes one aspect
of Pixar’s latest state-of-the-art animation artistry. She has a simply amazing
expressive range for a toy – in her case a porcelain one. There’s a moment
relatively early on, for example, where Bo looks affectionately at Woody,
reaches up to straighten his cowboy hat and then wrinkles her nose teasingly at
him – a tiny bit that just slayed me. Overall, the animation in this latest
Pixar project is uncannily good, the best ever. The scenes are also remarkable
in their visual complexity. A lot of the
second half of the film takes place in a musty old second-hand shop, which is
choc-a-block with all kinds of stuff: hundreds - perhaps thousands - of items, including
mementoes from earlier Pixar films and other cultural icons. There are several other
impressive environments as well, such as a scene with Woody and Forky walking
down a highway, or of Bonnie and her toys inside the RV, or of various
escapades at a carnival, all of which - as in Coco a couple years ago -
give the animators a lot of scope to demonstrate their cutting edge skill. The
level of fine detail throughout is simply phenomenal, as is the team’s ability
to render emotional expression on and in what we usually see as inanimate plastic
toys. 
While all Pixar feature films
are composed of a combination of action, adventure and humor, many of the best
ones also explore themes that are more meaningful – such as loyalty, love, prejudice,
even our pernicious increasing reliance on A.I. and other technology. Toy Story
3 explored themes of oppression and mortality with surprising success. The
long sequence within that picture in which Woody and friends are imprisoned by
Lotso and his gang is a clear allusion to detention/concentration camps; and
the penultimate scene in which the toys are heading for seemingly certain destruction
in a furnace is often seen more particularly as a reference to Nazi death
camps. In these terrible moments, however, the film emphasizes not abject
terror but - in one of the most evocative moments in the history of animated
film - the power of friendship and love in the face of mortality.
Toy Story 4 also examines a number of serious and affecting
themes; and although not quite as grave as in the earlier picture, they are no
less interesting and provocative: topics reflecting the anxieties (and
possibilities) of life’s essential insecurity
and impermanence – leaving the security of “home” for new possibilities elsewhere,
for example; taking a leap of faith for true love perhaps; or, more
fundamentally, coming to terms with one’s potential irrelevance.
[See Yuval Noah Harari’s
books Homo Deus (2017) and 21 Lessons
for the 21st Century (2018) in which he discusses this existential threat
as possibly the most worrisome political, economic and social challenge presented
by the ongoing tech revolutions: “The merger of infotech and biotech might
soon push billions of humans out of the job market undermining both liberty and
equality. … [creating a world] in which most people suffer not from
exploitation but from something far worse – irrelevance.” He suggests that this feeling of
irrelevance may underly the fears that have stoked support for movements like
Brexit and white working class support for the likes of D. Trump. In the Toy Story universe, which mirrors our
own of course, toys like Woody inevitably face irrelevance as they fall into
disfavor in the face of newer, shinier, and/or A.I. infused diversions. Or as their kids grow up and move on.
All this is not to say that watching
Toy Story 4 is a heavy lift. It’s actually a joyful, quite funny,
clever, entertaining and beautifully rendered experience. One that also may
require you to pull out the old hanky a few times toward the finish. That it is
also suitable for both the young (it has a “G’ rating!) and the elderly, along
with most folks in between, is a marvel. That there is also some protein along
with the sugar simply elevates the movie to a higher level for the grown-ups in
the audience. I loved it, and I hope and
expect most of my readers will too.
1 hour 40 minutes Rated G, for General
audiences
Grade: A
In wide general release
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