Toy Story 4 - Review Thread

I liked a lot! Probably my favorite out of the 4 movies.

The Bo and Woody storyline was really well done, and the emotional moments were much stronger in this one than the last one in my opinion.

Also the Jordan and Peele toys, stole every scene.

I won’t give away the end credits scenes, but stay after the credits start rolling. You won’t regret it.

And whoever designed those puppet scenes, can rot in hell lol.

9/10

The incredible credentials of Pixar's long-running success doesn't need explanation, as they've been far and away the best animation studio in the business since debuting in 1995 with the original Toy Story. Perhaps the only dents in their otherwise sterling reputation comes from their output of sequels, none of which have come all that close to replicating the success of their predecessors. Monsters University, Finding Dory, and Incredibles 2 are all fine films but suffer from typical sequel syndrome of mistaking bigger scale for bigger thematic storytelling. There's also of course Pixar's lone ugly blemish with Cars 2, and another ho-hum offering with Cars 3, though to be fair I never found the original Cars to be compelling and I'd argue is Pixar's most uninspired set of films. And yet for all their inability to nail the sequels to their other works, Pixar has been astonishingly adept when it comes to the beloved Toy Story franchise, their foundation and most consistent series of films. In fact Toy Story 3 was such an impressive conclusion (or so we thought) to cap off one of the greatest trilogies in cinematic history that the thought of Pixar returning to their flagship franchise seemed unnecessary and potentially disastrous to the reputation of the series. But lo and behold, Pixar has once again drubbed up another wonderful entry to the series, doling out an unprecedented fourth critically acclaimed film! While in my opinion it's the weakest of the franchise and only justifies its existence by being a really good movie, Toy Story 4 shows the franchise has hardly run out of steam and continues to dazzle with hilarious jokes and insightful themes that leaves me open to one day sitting down to watch Toy Story 5. Pixar has garnered a lot of deserved accolades during its run, but delivering a third sequel that's as universally acclaimed as the three films before it is perhaps the studio's most impressive feat yet.

Toy Story 4 picks up where the third film left off where Andy, now in college, is no longer in the picture and Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz (Tim Allen), and the other toys are now in the possession of young Bonnie (Madeleine McGraw). Woody's role in particular has changed quite a bit, going from being Andy's favorite toy and the literal sheriff of the others to hardly getting much playtime with Bonnie and attempting to maintain that level of authority. On Bonnie's first day of kindergarten, Woody even defies the command of other toys to sneak into Bonnie's backpack and make sure her first day goes okay. This proves to be fruitful as Woody helps Bonnie adjust to school, and also witnesses her creation of her new favorite "toy", a spork named Forky (Tony Hale). Forky desperately tries to escape from Bonnie in order to be where he perceives he belongs; in the trash, since after serving his purpose that's where he goes. Woody self-imposes the exhausting task of keeping an eye on Forky and making sure he's always there when Bonnie needs him. Matters get complicated when Bonnie and her family go on a road trip in an RV, and Forky leaps out of the window, causing Woody to follow in pursuit. Woody shares with Forky the importance of being there for Bonnie, and how through achieving this purpose he'll ultimately be rewarded with feelings of fulfillment. Forky points out that Woody has already achieved that purpose when he was with Andy, so now what's his purpose, his reason for existing now? It's the kind of wonderful existentialism that Pixar has nailed in so many of their works, best of which comes from the Toy Story franchise. While grappling with these ideas, Woody and Forky happen upon an antique store near the RV, and Woody wants to investigate believing that Bo Peep (Annie Potts) is inside. From here the plot unfurls in similar fashion to the previous films, where "bad" and "lost" toys attempt to disillusion Woody to the idea of ownership and try to keep him from returning to Bonnie.

While the plot itself doesn't have as much meat on its bones as the first three do, Toy Story 4 zips along with one hilarious scene after another, and also makes up for a lack of moments with the original toys (even Buzz is largely relegated to minimal support in this one) by introducing some wonderfully funny new characters, notably Duke Caboom (Keanu Reeves) and the duo Bunny (Jordan Peele) and Ducky (Keegan-Michael Key). There's not a single wasted scene or moment in Toy Story 4, and yet despite its breakneck pacing never feels rushed or overstuffed either. While most children's films are hurried, simplistic trash that hopes to keep children distracted with nonsense as long as possible, Pixar has always been masterful in controlling the ebb and flow of their narratives and not compromising structure for shiny novelties. While Toy Story 4 certainly moves more like flow and flow, the material is handled so deftly that the films never loses itself despite all the zany antics going on. More impressive is in the midst of the constant barrage of hilarious jokes and scenarios, Toy Story 4 is able to stop and juggle heady themes about once we reach our ultimate goal, how do we go about finding a new one, a reason to keep going on. Or how we find our worth when others can't see it themselves. Or how we adjust to new situations, even if it means reinventing ourselves altogether in order to make those adjustments. While this film doesn't pack the emotional gut punch that Toy Story 3 did, its themes are on par in regards to the complexities that it explores. Perhaps the best part of these ideas is that, depending on your age, one will grapple with these themes in completely unique ways. For a child, they could interpret those themes as similar to Bonnie's experience at school, whereas an adult may reflect on their life and ask themselves if they're happy with how things have turned out and whether or not they can still make a change for the better. Pixar is one of the few studios that actually make family films, meaning that there's something to be positively gained for anyone watching their film as opposed to the majority of the mind numbing dreck that lesser animation studios pump out solely aimed at children with low attention spans. Toy Story 4 continues that tradition and does so exceedingly well. There's really not anything that I can point to that's a real flaw of the film outside of its not fully inspired plot, and I think anyone of any age would be hard pressed to nitpick the film to the point of awarding it a negative review. It's hilarious, insightful, beautifully realized, and an interesting direction for the third sequel of the series. This is largely the Woody, Forky, and Bo Peep show, so it's not exactly the send off of these characters that we presumed Toy Story 3 was, and I'm not entirely sure if this movie needed to be made. But I sure am glad that it was, and I'd welcome with open arms Toy Story 5.

8/10

Spent the last five years wondering why a Toy Story 4 was needed, and knew about the Bo Beep thing for four of them.

Now, Duke Caboom is my new favorite Toy Story character.

Toy Story 4(6/20/2019)

With only a few recent exceptions I generally only watch Pixar movies on home video but when I do find myself seeing one in theaters it’s a bit of a trip because it means I get exposed to a set of trailers I normally don’t see. These trailers are usually a window into a world of absolute madness. At my Toy Story 4 screening I bore witness to one trailer about a pigeon who becomes a secret agent, some bullshit about a fox that wants to be a sled dog, a sequel to an Angery Birds movie I had assumed was a flop, and another sequel about troll dolls which resembled a candy colored hellscape of noise and terror. What I’m trying to say is, before you watch one of these Pixar movies you’re immediately reminded of how much worse the rest of the cartoons out there and the way the audience laughs at jokes about butts reminds you that, if they wanted to Pixar could be a lot more pandering and stupid than they are. Of course Pixar has always set themselves apart from their peers, which is something I wasn’t really taking into account when I was reviewing them all in a marathon session back in 2011 (long story). That article series was an exercise in comparing Pixar movies to the best that cinema had to offer, but as the years go on and I get a better idea of what contemporary animation is like and start comparing them to that and they start looking a whole lot better. Still, I have a bit of a quirky relationship to Pixar’s movies, especially their Toy Story franchise, and that made me rather unsure if I wanted a fourth.

Toy Story 4 actually starts with a flashback. It dramatizes something that is alluded to in the third film: the night when Bo Peep (Annie Potts) leaves the rest of the toys because the family decides to give away the lamp that she’s part of. We then flash forward to the status quo after the third film, in which the toys we’ve been following have been given away to a new kid named Bonnie (Madeleine McGraw). I always found it a little bit strange that this 2010 kid would be so interested in receiving a bunch of hand-me-down toys from the 90s which look like they’re actually from the 50s and as this new film establishes, I may have been right to be suspicious. As it turns out Bonnie does not actually spend much time playing with Woody (Tom Hanks), and being the vain attention whore that he’s always been he doesn’t exactly react well. When he learns that Bonnie is about to be going on her first day of kindergarten he sneaks into her backpack under the delusion she needs him and, seeing her distressed on her first day he tosses some scraps up to her table while she’s doing crafts and with them she makes a weird little statue out of a spork, a pipe cleaner, and some fake googly eyes and dubs him “Forky.” Soon thereafter Forky (Tony Hale) becomes sentient, and sensing that he’s a monstrosity immediately tries to kill himself by jumping into the trashcan. Woody determines that Bonnie has formed an attachment to Forky and does everything he can to keep Forky alive, which will be challenging because Bonnie’s parents are about to bring her on a road trip with all her toys.

This is a movie that a lot of people were really skeptical about in the run-up to its release because it was believed that Toy Story 3 had a perfect ending and that this would ruin it. I am a bit of an outlier in that I thought the ending of Toy Story 3 was far from perfect. Where other people were apparently bawling out their eyes at the sight of Andy giving his toys to Bonnie, I was thinking what the hell kind of seventeen year old gives this much of a damn about old toys he should have thrown out when he turned twelve? To me the whole thing was an overly sentimental cop out. Toy Story 3 was basically a retread of the themes established in Toy Story 2 about toys eventually being abandoned by their owners, its one reason to exist was to finally have this calamity to catch up with our characters and force them to face their fate… but the movie didn’t end up having the nerve to finally take the killshot and instead it basically gave its characters a new beginning which more or less set up a new series, so the fact that they’re continuing the franchise isn’t that much of a shock to me.

To me what has made some of the previous Toy Story movies interesting was the world building. A lot of animated movies build fantastical worlds where with talking animals or objects but the Toy Story movies are at least a little interested in exploring how the worlds they create are actually kind of fucked up. These movies make being a talking toy seem like a sort of existential hell of slavery and ingratitude… or at least that’s what I get out of them, the movies themselves would hint at all this while never quite having it in them to truly challenge the system they’ve established. Toy Story 4 is in many ways the Toy Story movie I’ve been waiting for in that the toys in it seem to finally be catching up to my way of seeing things. Case in point the newest addition to the cast, Forky, is the first toy we’ve really met who seems to view itself as a genuine monstrosity and spends much of the first half of the movie seeking death via trashcan. That is certainly an interesting approach but what’s really important is that Forky’s attitude does seem to plant a seed of sorts in the mind of some key characters in that he’s one of the first toy characters we’ve seen that doesn’t seem to have an instinctual desire to be played with by children and is decidedly not happy to be asked to do so. This seed is then watered and sprouted by the re-emergence of Bo Peep, who had been effectively killed off between Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3 and is now a “lost toy” and happy to be one because she’s free of having to spend all her time making some child happy.

Of course the Toy Story movies have long been meant as a sort of allegory for the relationship of a parent to a child and this fourth movie definitely carries that forward and leans into moments where the characters talk about “having a kid” as if they were parents instead of playthings. That’s part of why I always found the ending of Toy Story 3 to be kind of inadequate given that the toys don’t move on to a new phase of life after metaphorically letting Andy go but rather end up essentially replacing him and starting all over again. It’s as if they’re living out the life cycle of some rich dude who ends up impregnating a new trophy wife right as their kid from a previous marriage is going to college. Toy Story 4, by contrast is more like a movie where the toys (well, Woody anyway) actually do manage to find a new purpose in life after becoming empty nesters. It’s a notably different outlook from what we’ve seen earlier in the series which were usually populated by toys like Jessie and Lotso who, once removed from “their kids,” basically spend their whole lives feeling bitter and incomplete. Bo Peep, by contrast, seems to be revitalized through independence and the film at least understands why Forky (who’s maybe a bit of a stand-in for young father who causes an unplanned pregnancy) would not be pumped to be in played with by this kid.

This all isn’t to say that the series has suddenly become entirely Antinatalist. Plenty of the toys here are still very interested in coming into the possession of a child, like a pair of carnival prizes played by Key and Peele who sort of steal the show as comic relief characters who’ve been waiting three long years for someone to win them in the rigged midway game that’s trapped them. Then there’s the film’s villain Gabby Gabby, who is a bit of a retread of the “villainous bitter toy” thing that they’ve done in the last two films, but who none the less proves to be a rather sympathetic depiction of what is essentially the pain of infertility given that she’s a toy who was deemed defective from out of the factor and has spent decades in an antique store removed from children. Nonetheless, this is the Toy Story movie that finally suggests that there are other legitimate ways for these toys to live and in many ways provides some of the characters with an ending that manages to be happy while still making more allegorical sense. As such I reject the notion I’ve seen floated around that this is some kind of unnecessary cash grab, in fact I’d say that scene for scene it might actually be the best of the series. It manages to tell a larger and more meaningful story than the first movie, its comedy is a lot better than the second film’s, and it doesn’t wallow in the cheap sentimentality of the third. Of course this is coming from someone who didn’t grow up with these characters and has a somewhat perverse take on the whole franchise so take that sentiment with a grain of salt.

**** out of Five

Are they really planning more after this? Thought it ended well for a final ending. Enjoyed the characters to a degree but it's getting to the point where everyone's in on the joke. And I'm curious who the target audience is for these films?

Do children understand the Woody storyline? And are toys only things with eyes? I'd consider a basketball to be one of my favorite toys, would they also be a toy if I just slapped some eyes and a mouth on it in this universe?

Found myself checking my watch repeatedly during the final half hour. I could live with this being the last one.

6/10

The two questions I had before watching were 1) will this be as good as the other three? And 2) how necessary is Toy Story 4?

While it’s a fun and clever movie by one of the most consistent production companies around, it wasn’t as good as the other three nor was it really necessary. It won’t be the black sheep of the franchise like Indy 4 but it wasn’t good enough to feel like it was a story that had to be told after the perfect ending of Toy Story 3. On its own though it’s still a good, fun movie, it just had huge expectations it had to live up to.

I feel much the same way.   It was far more pandering than the other three as well, which brings it down.