Toy Story 4

Grade: A

It’s a funny thing about the Toy Story series: with how far apart they’ve been spaced, if you were a child when the original came out, chances are you now have children of your own that you could take to Toy Story 4, which opened today. I was there – at some theater or another – in 1995, 1999, 2010, and now 2019 for the fourth one. Both Tom Hanks and Tim Allen have stated they had trouble recording their voices for the final scenes, as they got emotional. Hanks couldn’t face the crew in the studio. Understandable. The film’s creators would not make another Toy Story movie unless they had an idea strong enough to equal or maybe surpass the previous three. They have delivered and prevailed. Toy Story 4 is a shimmeringly beautiful, thoroughly enjoyable experience. You will fall in love with the characters again, and it will even make you want to revisit the previous chapters from the last 24 years. Against all odds, it works and succeeds on numerous levels, and is everything a movie like this should be.

Toy Story 3 left us with the usual gang being given to a new owner, or as the toys would say, “we have a new kid.” Andy had gone to college and outgrown everybody, so now they belong to a young girl named Bonnie, who is now about to begin kindergarten. At her orientation a week before school, she literally makes a new friend. With a spork as the body, a popsicle stick broken in half for feet, googly eyes that don’t match, a mouth, and a pipe cleaner for arms, we meet Forky, who becomes Bonnie’s favorite toy. Forky spends the first day or so of his life attracted to and constantly looking for a trash can to jump into. As he is a plastic spork, he believes that’s where he belongs – with the trash. When Bonnie’s parents surprise her with a road trip in a rented RV, the adventures begin. A lesser movie, let alone a lesser Toy Story movie, would have gone on autopilot and given way to mindless action sequences. Toy Story 4 is smarter than that. It is filled to the brim with a refreshing amount of wisdom and introspection – the likes of which I didn’t expect to see here. For every exciting chase scene, which is fun to see and absolutely serves the plot, the characters get to live, breathe, laugh, cry, work through their hopes/dreams/insecurities, and just be characters.

As much of the film takes place at a carnival, the visuals are gorgeous sights to behold. I loved the screenplay’s kaleidoscopic feel, as various storylines separate, recombine, separate again, and rejoin, all while perfectly complementing one another, like the best of Robert Altman’s or Quentin Tarantino’s movies. Of the new voice talent to the franchise, Keanu Reeves does effective work as a Canadian Evel Knievel toy counterpart, as does Jordan Peele as one of two wise-cracking plush animals. And I have always been amazed at the resourcefulness of the toys. They do what they need to, in methods I could “buy” much easier than aquatic creatures driving a truck in Finding Dory. They may be merely falling with style as opposed to flying, but Toy Story 4 certainly flies.

Grade: A