Toy Story 5 has timely points to make about how social media should be kept away from children, and that I’m so glad it wasn’t around when I was a kid, as 9-year-old Bonnie (Scarlett Spears) eschews all of her regular toys once she’s given an iPad-like Lilypad (Greta Lee – TRON: Ares), which is meant to be tailored for kids so it doesn’t keep them addicted.
However, we soon see how hyper she gets when it hasn’t charged overnight, so she can’t play a silly game with the first friends she makes online who are, quite frankly, utter cunts, since as soon as she shows at a sleepover, how she also still plays with toys, they ridicule her in the group chat – thus, right to her face… albeit not TO her face, which is how keyboard warriors develop.
Can her parents, who bought her the stupid thing in the first place, realise their mistake and get her to be friends with a kid who DOESN’T have her head buried in tech all the time?
Well, the message was clearly lost on the only other patrons in the room on a weekday afternoon, which was a woman with two young kids, and god knows how many E-numbers they’d had in advance. I understand kids are going to talk a bit at a kids film, but in this case, she did nothing for the majority of the time that these ADHD-riddled robots were up and wandering about.
They were sat on the far side of the room from me, and babbling away. My instant reaction is to Shush someone. As she came over after the brat, she said something like, “What do you say to my son?”. “I said ‘Shush'”, I replied, in case she starting insinuating I’d actualy said something rude.
“Don’t you shush my son!”, she continued, before babbling some more, but the film was loud and I didn’t care to engage further, anyway. She was a fucking idiot and that was all anyone needed to know.
In fact, while I was sat at the back of the front section of the room, and them at the front of the back section – but on the other side of the room, so when I heard noise coming from them and looked over, I saw she was sat in her seat… using her phone. The film had only been running ten minutes! This is like the other moron I encountered during Scary Movie 6, as you can read in that review. The attention spans on some people today…
But back to the film and to some peoples’ surprise, I have never seen a whole Toy Story movie before now. I did try watching the third one when it came on BBC1 on Xmas Day, but I’d had a big lunch, a couple of drinks and I was shattered. I was recommended by one person to watch the second film, as this one was sort-of a sequel to it, and by another to read the synopses for 3 and 4, but I just didn’t get around to it.
I’ve seen plenty of clips, though, and I get that most of the action revolves around the rivalry between Woody (Tom Hanks – The Phoenician Scheme) and Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), which makes it odd that for large poritions of the running time, they are both completely absent!
Buzz pops up early on, though, as part of a random ‘Buzz army’, which never found a way to justify its existence for the entire 102-minute running time, but 90% of the time is spent with cowgirl doll Jessie (Joan Cusack – School of Rock) as the main focus, as she teams up with other toys to try to get themselves back in favour.
As for links with earlier films, I assumed that when another girl, Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris), is shown to have some early tech toys, which have long been abandoned, these were from an earlier film. Turns out that’s not the case, although I see Keanu Reeves’ one line Duke Caboom is a character who also popped up some time in the past.
Still, the older tech does give the only one big laugh of the film, where Smarty Pants (Conan O’Brien – The Lego Batman Movie) speaks, causing map device Atlas (Craig Robinson – In Your Dreams) to interrupt along the lines of, “He can only tell you how to wipe your ass!”, before Mr Pants manages to shut Atlas’ mouth as he says the last word.
The rest of Toy Story 5 is pretty bloody dull. 102 minutes has rarely passed by so slowly, and the script is so lacking in anything that makes you think the movie needs to exist. If this had come out back in the ’80s, it’d be like the later Police Academy films where they all go straight to video.
Toy Story 5 is in cinemas now, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD. However, once announced, it will appear on the New DVD Blu-ray 3D and 4K releases UK list.
However, there is already a ton of other Toy Story 5 merch online here!
NOTE: There is a mid- and a post-credits scene as per my video below.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 102 minutes
Release date: June 18th 2026
Studio: Disney
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Rating: 2/10
Directors: McKenna Harris, Andrew Stanton
Screenplay: McKenna Harris, Andrew Stanton
Producers: Jessica Choi, Lindsey Collins
Music: Randy Newman
Voice Cast:
Woody: Tom Hanks
Buzz Lightyear: Tim Allen
Jessie: Joan Cusack
Smarty Pants: Conan O’Brien
Bonnie: Scarlett Spears
Lilypad: Greta Lee
Snappy: Shelby Rabara
Blaze: Mykal-Michelle Harris
Atlas: Craig Robinson
Bonnie’s Mum: Lori Alan
Bonnie’s Dad: Jay Hernandez
Dolly: Bonnie Hunt
Trixie: Kristen Schaal
Forky: Tony Hale
Mr. Pricklepants: John Hopkins
Rex: Wallace Shawn
Combat Carl: Ernie Hudson
Blaze’s Mum: Krys Marshall
Mr Potato Head: Jeff Bergman
Slinky Dog: Blake Clark
Mrs Potato Head: Anna Vocino
Pizza with Sunglasses: Bad Bunny (as Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio)
Bo Peep: Annie Potts
Dr. Nutcase: Matty Matheson
Hamm: John Ratzenberger
Duke Caboom: Keanu Reeves
Karen Beverly: Melissa Villaseñor
Evil Bullseye: Alan Cumming
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.