Toy Story 5 Film Review: Playtime, Perfected

Toy Story 5 gives Jessie her finest chapter yet, trading easy nostalgia for a tender, funny story about toys, tech, and the ache of growing up.

Good news up front, and I will shout it from the top of the toy box: this is the real thing, the best the gang has been since that three-hanky goodbye in 2010. 

This time the spotlight belongs to Jessie (Joan Cusack, of Unicorn Store), now the go-to toy in kid Bonnie’s (Scarlett Spears, of Wicked: For Good) room. That cozy arrangement wobbles the day a slick tablet named Lilypad (Greta Lee, of Past Lives) arrives, a chirpy LeapFrog-style gadget with loud opinions about what a modern kid really needs. As Bonnie drifts toward the screen, Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen, of Lightyear) and the rest of the room feel the oldest toy fear there is: being left in the crate. Jessie even calls in old pal Woody (Tom Hanks, of A Man Called Otto), long gone from this house and living the nomad life out on the road, for backup.

Director Andrew Stanton (In the Blink of an Eye) and co-director Kenna Harris spend the first fifteen minutes leaning hard on a screens-are-ruining-play sermon, and you steel yourself for the whole movie to hit that one note. It doesn’t. Their screenplay slowly reveals that the tech panic is the wrapper, not the gift. The real story is Jessie’s. Since she yodeled her way into the second film, Cusack’s cowgirl has played third, then fourth fiddle to Woody and Buzz, and handing her the lead is the smartest call these filmmakers make. Her backstory threads into Bonnie’s in ways that sneak up on you, and the result is that rare legacy sequel that finds something new to say about a character we assumed we knew cold.

Getting back into the saddle, Cusack hits a home run. The two-time Oscar nominee stepped back from the spotlight years ago to raise her kids, and we are lucky she returned for Jessie’s biggest chapter. The work is tender, funny, and sharp, the sound of an actor reminding everyone why she has always been one of the best, on camera or off. Give her a sigh, a held breath, a crack in that bright twang, and she tells you everything you need to know.

Hanks and Allen slide back into roles they could play in their sleep, and that comfort is part of the fun. The script gently ribs Woody about getting older, while Buzz comes out with less to do, parked on the bench for long stretches before a late rush of action. Whether that owes to story or scheduling is hard to say, but neither legend feels shortchanged so much as carefully rationed, which is its own small surprise given the size of those names on the poster.

The newcomers more than hold up. Spears does affecting, nearly wordless work as Bonnie, telling you how much it stings to outgrow something with little more than a sniffle. Mykal-Michelle Harris is warm and easy as Blaze, an animal-loving kid who might be the friend Bonnie is reaching for. Lee makes Lilypad a treat, landing jokes at Woody and Buzz’s expense and then taking her own turn in the hot seat with a grin. Conan O’Brien (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You) pops up as a chatty new gadget and squeezes out one of his funnier bits in ages.

Then there is the craft, and forgive the broken record, but Pixar keeps lapping itself. Stretches of Toy Story 5 look nearly photo-real, the studio’s new RenderMan XPU engine pushing light and texture into places the 1995 original could only dream about. The film also returns to the boxier 1.85:1 frame of the first three movies, a small move that pulls you back to where it all started. Randy Newman is here for his fifth Toy Story score, joined by a radio-friendly Taylor Swift original called “I Knew It, I Knew You,” co-written with Jack Antonoff. The whole thing was built without a lick of AI, a point the studio is right to wear proudly.

And then it gets you. Somewhere along the way you start thinking about the toys you left behind, the ones that maybe watched you walk off and hand them to someone smaller. Pixar has been mining that particular ache since 1995, and it still lands because the studio keeps hiring people who treat real feelings with care, tucking heavy questions inside characters soft enough to carry them. The PG rating, a first for the series after four G-rated entries, fits a film willing to sit with slightly bigger ideas.

For me, Pete is my special ache. He is a bear I have had since the day I was born, dressed in one of my old baby shirts, a heart patch stitched onto his neck where my grandma rebuilt him after I hugged the stuffing to jelly. He sat on my shelf this whole time I was writing this review, and I’d occasionally find myself staring right at him with my eyes stinging, suddenly aware of every toy I never kept.

Those bigger ideas come down to being present, on both sides of the toy box. It is about setting the screen down, holding on to who you are even when it costs you a little popularity, and making peace with the truth that you can want to be liked and still be yourself. Both can be true at once. Toy Story 5 says as much without ever wagging a finger, and that open hand is the whole trick.

Nobody needed a fifth Toy Story. This one makes the case anyway, and it does it by handing the spotlight to the toy who waited longest for her turn. Go find your own Pete when the credits roll, hug him a little too tight, and don’t say you weren’t warned.

Toy Story 5 will be released in globally in theaters on June 19, 2026.