Movie Info
Movie Name: Toy Story 4
Studio: Pixar Animation Studios
Genre(s): Animated/Action/Adventure/Family
Release Date(s): June 11, 2019 (Premiere)/June 21, 2019 (US)
MPAA Rating: G
Is Bonnie God? She gave life to Forky….
Woody is discovery a scary truth. Bonnie is becoming less and less interested in playing with him. When she starts kindergarten and makes a new friend named Forky, Woody realizes keeping Forky around is the key to keeping in Bonnie’s presence. Unfortunately, Forky was made from trash and thinks he is trash…and none of the other toys can convince him otherwise. When Bonnie takes her toys on a vacation, Woody and Forky become lost and are reunited with a long lost friend that could change everything for Bonnie’s toys.
Directed by Josh Cooley, Toy Story 4 is a Pixar-Disney animated family movie. Following the release of Incredibles 2 in 2018, Pixar’s sequel follows the holiday special Toy Story that Time Forgot in 2014. The movie was released to positive reviews and received the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature with a nomination for Best Original Song (“I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away”). The film also received a nomination for Razzie Redeemer Award for Keanu Reeves (along with his performance in John Wick 3).
I like the Toy Story movies, but they aren’t my favorite Pixar films. They often try really hard to stir emotion in the viewers and almost prey on the emotional nature of childhood. Toy Story 3 in 2010 ended up on an extremely emotional moment and almost felt like the end of the series…but here is Toy Story 4 which desperately tries to match Toy Story 3’s emotion. A ******spoiler alert****** exists for the rest of the review.
Ok…so this key isn’t alive…and furniture isn’t alive (except a kid’s chair)…who is alive and who is inanimate?
Toy Story 4’s story feels a bit repetitive. The toys are lost…again and it feels very familiar. The story feels a bit like the Halloween special Toy Story of Terror! (which had Bonnie losing her toys on vacation to an Ebay seller…which likewise felt like Toy Story 2). The toys are of course reunited with Bonnie (who has never truly developed as much as Andy), and Woody opts to stay on the road as a lost toy with Bo Peep. After Andy giving up his toys in Toy Story 3, it just doesn’t feel as emotional.
The cast is back and still good. It feels like Tim Allen’s Buzz Lightyear takes a backseat in this entry, and Tom Hanks is the star. I always like Annie Potts so it is nice to have her back as Bo Peep. I also like the newly introduced Forky voiced by Tony Hale. Christina Hendricks plays the Gabby Gabby character while Kean Reeves is introduced as Duke Kaboom. Carnival prize characters Ducky and Bunny are played by the team of Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele.
Say goodbye to Woody
The movie continues to look good. The art and style of the film is solid. The characters have been perfected by this time in the twenty years they have been around. It is a bit odd to look back at Toy Story in comparison to this film…I could see them actually remastering it sometime just to match it up.
Toy Story 4 raises a lot of questions…like are humans gods? Bonnie instills life in Forky and other things she makes…which makes you wonder if she alone has that power or if anyone who builds anything can do it. The toys in this version break a lot of rules (aka people hear them and they also do more to affect their reality like driving cars)…will toys revolt some day? The biggest question for me is how do these toys stay together and not break and get tossed out…especially some of the cheap plastic ones. Until Toy Story 5 pops into existence, we may never know.
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