Toy Story 4 review – a franchise still very much alive
After a hesitant start, the gang gets into top gear on a road trip that showcases the studio’s visual wizardry and narrative skill
Last year, I wrote about my (unfounded) fears that Mary Poppins Returns might trample the memory of a movie I fell in love with as a child. I felt a similar anxiety about Toy Story 4, after arguing that the first three movies formed cinema’s first “note-perfect trilogy”. Despite being in my early 30s when Toy Story came out, I feel like I’ve spent a lifetime with its characters, not least because they’ve been with me throughout my children’s lives. The finale of 2010’s Toy Story 3, with its echoes of the last chapter of The House at Pooh Corner, just seemed so… final; a sublime evocation of the bittersweet sorrow of growing up that probably meant more to adults than children.
What could another instalment possibly add? Did we really need to know what happened next? For the first movement of Toy Story 4, I found myself concluding that the disheartening answer was “probably not”. Woody and Buzz et al are still wonderful creations, and time spent in their company is rarely wasted. But riffs about new owner Bonnie starting kindergarten and once-favoured toys getting left in the cupboard smack of old ground being retrodden.