Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story 5 is not just another sequel. It is a reaffirmation of why this franchise changed movies, animation, childhood, and probably all of us. Pixar once again elevates the animation medium, not only through visual craft, but through storytelling that feels primal, timely, devastating, and life-giving. It is a film about toys, tech, friendship, aging, purpose, play, and the terrifyingly temporary nature of being needed. Somehow, it is also one of the most joyful experiences Pixar has ever given us.
Pixar Raises The Bar In Ways You Can Actually Feel
Visually, Toy Story 5 is stunning from the opening shot. Pixar has been improving its animation technology for decades, but sometimes those leaps are easier to appreciate in behind-the-scenes features than in the moment. This time, the jump is immediate. You feel it. You experience it. The visual prowess is right there, and the film plays with it beautifully.
The textures are richer. The lighting feels warmer and more emotionally specific. The toys look familiar, but somehow more alive. The world feels tactile in that impossible Pixar way, where plastic, fabric, dust, sunlight, tablet glass, and childhood imagination all feel like they belong to the same emotional ecosystem.
Where the film really loses its mind, and mine with it, is in the way it renders children’s imaginations during play. These sequences are magical. They are not just visual flourishes. They are acts of storytelling. The movie understands that a child’s imagination is not one universal visual style. It is personal. It is messy. It is handmade. It is melodramatic. It is absurd. It is specific to the kid doing the playing. That choice gives the film an emotional and visual identity that feels both new and perfectly rooted in the franchise.
Jessie Takes The Lead in Toy Story 5 And Joan Cusack Rides With Full Heart
Joan Cusack’s Jessie truly leads the charge this time, and it feels earned. Jessie has always carried a different emotional frequency than the rest of the toys. Her story has been marked by love, abandonment, panic, hope, and the desperate need to matter to someone without being consumed by that need. Toy Story 5 understands all of that history and gives her a story worthy of it.
Cusack is spectacular. She brings Jessie’s humor, panic, grit, and aching sincerity together with total control. This is a performance that feels funny until it hurts, then hurting until it heals. Jessie is not simply stepping into more responsibility. She is confronting what it means to be important to a kid in a world where attention is being pulled in new directions every second.
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Tom Hanks and Tim Allen remain foundational as Woody and Buzz. What is beautiful here is that the film does not need Woody and Buzz to be the stars of every emotional turn to prove they still matter. That is part of the point. You do not always have to be the center of the movie to still be a huge part of the movie. Their presence carries history, comfort, and weight. The film understands legacy without letting nostalgia swallow the story.
The Kids And Parents Make The Emotions Land
Scarlett Spears gives Bonnie an authenticity that matters. Bonnie is growing up, but not in some fake movie way where childhood suddenly disappears in one dramatic moment. It is quieter than that. More painful too. She is still sweet. She still loves her toys. But the world around her is changing, and the pull of technology feels real without turning her into a villain.
Mykal-Michelle Harris brings a wonderful spark as Blaze, and the film uses her world to expand the conversation about play, memory, and what children leave behind without realizing what they are leaving behind. The parents, including Lori Alan as Bonnie’s Mom, Jay Hernandez as Bonnie’s Dad, and Krys Marshall as Blaze’s Mom, give the human world warmth and credibility. They add weight without overexplaining everything. That matters, because this franchise works best when adults are not evil or clueless. They are just people doing their best while childhood keeps changing around them.
The New Toys of Toy Story 5
Greta Lee’s Lilypad is also a smart addition. The character could have been an easy villain, just “tablet bad, toys good.” Instead, the film is sharper than that. Lilypad has her own logic. She has her own ideas about helping Bonnie. That makes the conflict more interesting, because it is not really about technology being evil. It is about connection, attention, and what kind of presence children need most.
Conan O’Brien is also hilariously perfect as Smarty Pants, who somehow embodies the worst version of tech while also proving Jessie and the analog toys kind of have a point. He is loud, intrusive, overly confident, and aggressively “helpful” in that very specific way modern devices can be when they think convenience equals connection. Yet, at the same time, Smarty Pants is also a bizarrely perfect reflection of what the traditional toys believe makes a real toy. He wants to be useful. He wants to be chosen. He wants to matter to his kid.
Conan plays that contradiction beautifully, turning what could have been a one-note potty joke machine into a ridiculous, irritating, and strangely sincere piece of toy-tech chaos. Also, genuine kudos to the juvenile toilet humor. In almost anyone else’s hands, it would have been too much immediately. Here, the film knows exactly how many lines to flush into the story before backing away, which makes every dumb little bathroom gag land harder than it has any right to.
Toy Story 5 Is Timely, But More Importantly, It Is Primal
The story absolutely destroyed me. Yes, it is timely. Toy meets tech is an obvious and relevant conflict in 2026, especially for anyone who has watched a child drift from physical play to screens. But the film goes much deeper than that. It strikes at basic human needs.
We all want friends. We all want to be accepted as ourselves. We all want to feel useful. We all want to believe that the time we give someone means something. Toy Story 5 understands that relationships are temporary in form, but often permanent in impact. Time together may not last forever. Presence can. Appreciation can. Influence can. Love can.
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That idea is so simple it almost feels dangerous. The film looks at the temporary nature of childhood and refuses to treat it as tragedy alone. It is sad, yes. It is devastating sometimes. But it is also beautiful. The fact that play ends does not mean it failed. The fact that a child grows does not mean the love disappears. The point was never to be needed forever. The point was to be there when you were needed.
That is life changing in the way only Toy Story can be. It takes a feeling most of us try not to think about, then turns it into something we can hold.
Andrew Stanton And Kenna Harris Never Force The Tears
Andrew Stanton and Kenna Harris handle this story with incredible grace. The messages are huge, but the film never feels heavy-handed. It does not lecture. It does not panic. It does not turn technology into a lazy villain or nostalgia into a weapon. Instead, it lets the toys wrestle with change the way people do, with fear, denial, jealousy, tenderness, and eventually understanding.
The direction hits each emotion without smashing you over the head. The comedy still works. The adventure still moves. The stakes still feel accessible for kids. But under all of it, the film keeps boiling a well of emotion until the audience is crying before they even realize the water got hot.
That is the real magic here. Pixar does not force you into tears. It invites you into recognition. Then the tears show up because you know it is true.
Randy Newman And Taylor Swift Turn Memory Into Music
Randy Newman’s score is, once again, part of the soul of Toy Story. His music knows these characters. It knows their emotional weather. It can lean into nostalgia, then step away from it and find something new. The score brings the audience to the edge, then gently pushes us into the feeling we were already trying to avoid.
Taylor Swift’s original song, “I Knew It, I Knew You,” also feels beautifully tied to Jessie’s journey. It does not read like a random celebrity needle drop. It feels connected to the franchise’s emotional language, especially the ache of being remembered, misunderstood, loved, and left. It hits because Jessie’s story has always lived in that space between joy and abandonment.
Together, the music does what this franchise has always done best. It makes memory audible.
Play Is Not Optional
What Toy Story 5 ultimately understands is that play is not childish. Play is essential. It is how children process fear. It is how they practice friendship. It is how they create worlds where they can be brave before real life asks them to be. But the film also argues something bigger. Adults need play too. We need imagination. We need rituals. We need objects and stories that remind us who we were, who loved us, and who we are still becoming.
That is why Toy Story remains so powerful. It has always been about toys, but it has never only been about toys. It is about being present. It is about purpose. It is about love that changes shape. It is about the heartbreak and privilege of mattering to someone, even if just for a while.
Toy Story 5 plays a magical part in our lives and in cinematic history as a whole. It honors what came before, but it earns its own existence completely. It made me cry. It made me laugh. It made me think about the people, objects, stories, and tiny rituals that shaped me. Most of all, it made me want to play again, so I give it a
10/10
Toy Story 5 releases exclusively in theaters on June 19, 2026. See it with family, friends, kids, parents, or honestly anyone who has ever loved something they eventually had to let go of. This is a big-screen Pixar experience, and the imagination sequences, emotional lighting, and music deserve a full theatrical room. Bring tissues. Bring someone who thinks they are ready. They are not.
Featured in: Top 100 Animated Characters of All Time (Sheriff Woody Pride is #10.)
Follows: Toy Story , Toy Story 2 , Toy Story 3
Ready to return to the toy box and let Toy Story 5 wreck you in the most beautiful way? Which part of childhood play do you miss most? Are you ready for Jessie to lead the emotional charge? Do you think technology changed play, or just changed how we recognize it? Tell me in the comments or @me.
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