Film of the week: “Toy Story 5” – A friend in tech?

No film franchise has ever produced a good fifth installment.

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Moreover, chapter 5 generally sounds the death knell of a saga.

Let us judge, excluding reboots and prequels: Harry Callahan bowed out without panache with The Dead Pool ; John McClane ended on a false note with the calamitous A Good Day To Die Hard ; Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire marked the franchise’s lowest point (and, hopefully, its swan song); the Pirates of the Caribbean series has plummeted since the first part and crashed with Dead Men Tell No Tales ; Harrison Ford deserved a better farewell than Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ; and whoever thought the perfect Jason Bourne trilogy needed two sequels, ending with the lame Jason Bournemérite la prison cinématographique é perpétuité.

When it comes to perfect trilogies, Pixar achieved this holy grail in 2010 with Toy Story 3an absolutely accurate conclusion to its flagship series, which launched the cinema branch of the animation studio in 1995. The film was fast-paced, nuanced, offered the public the greatest cinema villain since Hannibal Lecter – the Lots-O’-Huggin’ Bear from Sunnyside, charismatic, tortured and genocidal – and ended with a finale so shocking that any spectator left dry could legitimately be taken to a dark room to fail the Voight-Kampff test.

Without fully measuring what they had accomplished, nine years later and with eyes fixed on dollar signs, Pixar studios delivered a fourth chapter – a pseudo-epilogue featuring a suicidal toy and some sequences daringly flirting with the horror film. As daring as it is in its approach personal development and acceptance of the multiple ends of life, the film still gave an impression of repetition and did not manage to live up to the previous three.

However, another sequel was inevitable, since Toy Story 4 has earned more than a billion dollars worldwide… And it is with a heavy heart but hardly surprised that we must announce that Toy Story 5 confirms the rule of the fifth part.

Which doesn’t mean that the film is a failure. It’s clearly better than its predecessor and retains some of the series’ signature charms. It just seems like a somewhat deflated recycling exercise: we can’t say goodbye to our favorite toys forever without it ending up feeling like an emotional ambush imposed by the studio.

Toy Story 5 brings the saga back to Bonnie. Jessie the cowgirl (Joan Cusack) is now sheriff and leads the toys as they face a new existential crisis: technology.

Unable to make friends because children no longer play with toys, lonely Bonnie quickly becomes an iPad child when her parents finally give in and buy her a tablet called Lilypad (Greta Lee).

Having become addicted and forgetting the true joy of “playing”, Bonnie abandons her toys, which become alarmed by the technological invader. Jessie then hatches a plan to save the little girl. But this separates her from the rest of the group and forces her to confront the traumas that still haunt her. It’s up to Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz (Tim Allen) and the whole gang to come to his aid.

Co-written with Kenna Harris and directed by Andrew Stanton, Toy Story 5 has the advantage of being extremely topical. The film addresses screen addiction, social isolation and the superficial connections that are forged in a so-called “hyperconnected” age. This temporal dimension is reinforced by the fact that more and more countries are considering banning social networks for those under 16 – most recently the United Kingdom.

To its credit, the screenplay never places Lilypad in the box of absolute evil and thus avoids simplistic oppositions such as “technology is bad” and “the old world is good”, which allows for more nuance on the evolution of human bonds. That said, the story comes to a disappointingly lukewarm conclusion, as if Harris and Stanton lacked courage and felt that their story of intrusive and potentially harmful technology would work better as a gentle caution than as a real warning.

To compensate for this disappointing aspect, as well as a significantly weaker first half where the Lightyears abound, the authors had the good idea of ​​placing Jessie in the foreground.

Finally taking over from the Woody-Buzz duo, his quest to help Bonnie make a true friend offers some scenes that tickle the tear glands. Toy Story 5 also refers to the heartbreaking montage of Toy Story 2 punctuated by “When She Loved Me”, exploring the wounds of abandonment that continue to haunt Jessie. But again, the resolution doesn’t hit as hard as it should, and much of the catharsis seems recycled from previous films.

Still, Joan Cusack is a treasure. More of her in the cinema, please.

It is undeniable that even a Toy Story in small form remains a good film. This fifth part revisits some of the favorite themes of the series – coming of age, the power of imagination and loss – and it is difficult to resist its warm finale. But as one melancholy toy says, “the age of toys is over”, and judging by Toy Story 5the enchantment caused by Pixar’s previous adventures no longer extends to infinity and beyond.

When it comes to this and the film feels like a best-of compilation for a new generation, without answering the question “Did we really need a new Toy Story?” “Maybe it’s time to grow up for good, put the toys back in the box, and revisit the greatest Pixar ever again.

Ratatouille. It is Ratatouille. And if you don’t agree, you’ll just be agreeing with the 1995 Buzz when he said: “There appears to be no sign of intelligent life anywhere.” HAS”

Toy Story 5 hits theaters worldwide on June 19.