The fifth instalment of Toy Story has received mixed reviews from critics, who have described it as being “a warm and wry update” to an otherwise now “played out” franchise.
But one thing most reviewers agreed on is that the message of the film – which finds Woody, Buzz and Jessie fighting with a new digital device called Lilypad for children’s attention – is a “cautionary” one.
Toy Story 5 is released in UK cinemas on Friday, just days after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced a forthcoming social media ban for all those under 16.
In a two-star review, the Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey said the movie was “certainly topical” but also “the worst in the series”.
“While this is topical, there does come a point in any franchise where the natural momentum dies,” she wrote of the series, which began in 1995.
“With Toy Story 5, Pixar’s 30-year-old franchise has finally started to show its age.”
The action-comedy favourite once again stars Tim Allen as spaceman Buzz Lightyear, Tom Hanks as a pull-string cowboy doll named Woody, and Joan Cusack as cowgirl Jessie.
Past Lives actress Greta Lee joins the star-studded cast as perhaps their biggest threat yet, a frog-like smart tablet known as Lilypad.
Buzz and Woody once again help to bring a team of toys together in a bid to save their owner, young Bonnie, from falling under the spell of the electronic device.
Conan O’Brien, Jordan North and Bad Bunny are among the stars supplying voices in the film.
The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw also awarded the film two out of five stars, saying Toy Story was now all “played out” and in need of “new batteries”.
He said the one particular plot point “is revived and resolved in a very spurious and unsatisfying way”, adding that “IP exhaustion has set in” on the franchise.
However, the Telegraph’s Robbie Collin held a much higher opinion of film five, pointing to a “warm and wry update of a beloved formula” in his four-star review.
He praised cowgirl doll Jessie’s “promotion” to lead character, referring to the character’s emotional journey while revisiting her first owner.
The film is, he said, “another parable of parental crisis dressed up as a brightly coloured family adventure” – and a “cautionary tale about online childhoods”.
Yet it “pulls fewer punches than might be expected”, he added, regarding its social commentary on technology.
Kevin Maher of the Times also offered four stars, commenting that “Sir Keir Starmer will love it”.
He said the movie’s message is “a sign of turning tide or an audacious act of self sabotage”.
“A touchy-feely third act seems to argue for a shaky compromise of the toxic tech debate (group chat = bad, non WiFi-enabled tech toys under supervision at certain times = tolerable),” he pondered.
“Yet in the end, Toy Story 5 cannot shake the lingering sense that it’s not only the age of toys but childhood itself that is over.”
But there was scepticism from Rolling Stone’s David Fear, who said: “Why are you doing this, Pixar?
“Regardless of well-deserved worries about screen-time or not, there doesn’t feel like there’s a reason for this to exist other than keeping your stockholders happy.”
Empire’s Helen O’Hara awarded four stars for “a welcome return to philosophical form” in film five, which, she said, is “funny, warm-hearted and largely – perhaps overly – optimistic”.
There was another positive review from Screen International’s Tim Grierson, who said it was “another delightful adventure that mines fresh emotional terrain while producing plenty of hearty laughs”.
Elsewhere, the Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney said the film “does the enduring franchise proud,” adding: “The movie’s captivating sweetness is hard to resist.”
The Financial Times’s Danny Leigh dished out three stars, saying it paints a “portrait of tech rendering the young both sadder and meaner”.
And BBC Culture’s Nicholas Barber branded it “the year’s most traumatic film – for parents”.
Earlier this month, Hanks told BBC News the latest Toy Story film highlights children’s addiction to screens, an issue that he said strikes “terror in the heart”.
The US actor said the cast related to the storyline because they had all “met that disinterest” of young people who “look down at their phone, look up, look down, look up”.
“This is a generational thing,” he told the BBC’s David Sillito, “where one generation has this thing that defines them technologically in society, and they pour everything into it.”
