Like everyone else I thought that the Toy Story series was done with the third film which was just about perfect. Trying to tack on anything more to the franchise seems cheap and doomed to failure. Yet after this came out we heard nothing but rave reviews about it and more than a few made particular remarks about its emotional ending. This persuaded my wife and myself to catch it at the cinemas before it has been pushed out by the new Spider-Man film.
After a prequel scene that shows Bo Peep, one of Molly’s toys being given away, the story picks up where we last left off. Most of the toys are content being with Bonnie but Woody is disappointed he isn’t played with. At kindergarten Bonnie makes a simple figure with a fork and some art supplies and after naming it Forky it comes alive as a toy like the rest of them. Forky however is convinced that he is trash and keeps trying to run away while Woody keeps having to restrain him. During a road trip with the family the two are separated from the other toys and Woody finds Bo Peep’s lamp in an antique store. Realizing that she might be nearby, he tries to find her only to run into a creepy doll who seems to run the place and who wants the voice box that in inside Woody.
As you can probably tell, the story is nothing exceptional. With the exception of Woody, the old and familiar characters are mostly given token roles in favor of new ones, including a pair of fluffy toys Ducky and Bunny. Bo Peep who was absent in the last film and had only a minor role in the earlier two films of course returns to be one of the main characters here. Buzz Lightyear is relegated to a silly self-discovery mini-arc in which Woody advises him that he can tell what’s best to do by listening to his own inner voice. The rest only get to help out in minor ways and strangely don’t even have much interaction with Forky. The advertised emotional ending is predictable and while it’s appropriate it works only because the older characters have so much history together and yet they’ve been neglecting it in this film.
Still this isn’t all bad. Their technology is better than ever with the environment being rendered to close to photorealistic quality. They obviously picked sets like the antique store and the carnival for how great they would look and indeed the visuals are fabulous. There is also some depth in the idea that a toy is whatever a child like Bonnie decides is a toy and the other toys readily accept that. But overall this is a children’s show and has little value for adults except for whatever residual affection you might have for the characters from the previous films. Even children these days might have trouble connecting with this as I don’t believe that they have a close emotional connection with favorite toys any longer.