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| Toy Story 4 (2019) |
Right from the opening scene, this movie makes it clear why this story was necessary to tell. Toy Story 3 was this big, grandiose adventure, and Toy Story 4 is far more personal. The opening scene with Bo Peep being given away makes that abundantly clear. It's rare that all of my doubts about a movie can be quashed within 5 minutes, but there we go. This movie did it. Quick note: how far have we come with animation since Toy Story 1? It's really easy to be disenfranchised by CGI nowadays, since really good animation is becoming commonplace, but I'm always going to be impressed by it. The rain effects and the way the water shines off the plastic toys, the lighting effects in the sun, the human characters... the human characters! Do you remember how off they looked 20 years ago? Comparing the dog from Toy Story 1 to the cat from Toy Story 4 is just... well, there is no comparison. I think it mainly comes down to attention to detail; imperfections in the skin and plastic that make everything seem just that little bit more real.
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| Tom Hanks as Woody and Annie Potts as Bo Peep |
I mentioned that this movie was a more personal story. To a certain extent, all the Toy Story films are personal stories, but this feels like the most personal. It's all about Woody, and his arc in this movie is really compelling. A toy that wants to be helpful who is no longer helpful; that's just inherently interesting, and the opening act does a great job of setting up where Woody is in this movie. Bringing Bo Peep back was a great choice, as I always liked their relationship in the earlier Toy Story movies, and Tom Hanks and Annie Potts have great chemistry. Woody in general is such a great character. I love his unwavering stubbornness, and the Woody in this movie really feels like the natural progression from where the character's come from in the rest of the series. To a certain extent, the way Buzz is used makes it feel like they just threw him in because they had to, as he's not super integrated with the main plot, but that's really only a minor quibble, since I do like how he was used. The 'inner voice' jokes were consistently effective, and varied enough by the end that I didn't mind that it really was the only joke Buzz got in the entire movie.
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| Tim Allen as Buzz |
I really like all the new characters they introduced in this story, particularly Forky. Forky as a concept is a really great one, and it makes the world of Toy Story feel a lot bigger than it did in the past. Knowing that it's not some manufacturing trick that brings the toys to life but is instead the children themselves just makes the whole thing feel a lot more magical. Forky on his own is a great character as well. They rode the 'trash' jokes as long as they could before switching tactics, turning Forky into a wide-eyed, almost childlike innocent, and his naivety as he's learning about the world is really great to watch. Duck and Bunny also ended up being far less unbearable than they looked like they were going to be from the trailers. They ended up being really funny, though I guess that was inevitable when you cast Key & Peele as a duo. I'll be honest, I wasn't as enthralled with Duke Caboom as the rest of the internet seemed to be. I feel like everyone jumped aboard the Keanu hype train and didn't notice that the character wasn't really that funny. I laughed, don't get me wrong, but with a character like Duke Caboom, I feel like he could have been much funnier.
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| Tony Hale as Forky |
You might notice I haven't talked about the other returning characters from the Toy Story series, and that's because the movie sidelines them in a really disappointing way. I feel like the heart of these movies, or a part of it, has been the family unit that was the group of Andy's toys, and seeing them stuck in the RV, and not even cutting back to them all that often, was a little, like I said, disappointing. In general, the movie seemed a lot slower than past Toy Story movies, which wasn't inherently a problem on its own, since it allowed for the more personal story to shine through. The downside is that the movie was lacking a final act intensity that you normally get with a Toy Story movie. The stakes never seemed as high as they have in the past, and I'm not saying you have to go to the level that Toy Story 3 did, but the climax was basically the first movie's final act all over again, just less tense or exciting. Part of that comes from the lack of a real villain. Gabby Gabby was a great character, but, by her nature, not really a villain. Not every story needs a villain, but this one really felt like it did, as there needed to be an external force making things harder for our heroes. I've been a little hard on this movie's finale, since there's one thing it did that elevates it a little higher: it made me cry. The personal payoff worked, and just in case you haven't seen it, I don't want to spoil it, since it's worth going in blind. I feel like Toy Story 3's ending might have been a little sadder, on a more fundamental level, but this one hit me harder.
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| Christina Hendricks as Gabby Gabby |
So, yeah, Toy Story 4 (2019) is a movie that I'm glad was made. It's not the best, it's really just a good Toy Story movie, but a good Toy Story movie still equals a great movie overall. Let me put it this way: after seeing this movie, I wouldn't be upset if they announced Toy Story 5, since seeing this movie has given me faith they would only do that if they had a good idea for it. 8/10.
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