OK, so during my analysis of the newest installment in the Toy Story saga, I decided to grant myself a pardon, which allows me to not discuss the animation. At this point, discussing it is basically rote. Yes, it is bright, colorful, and lush, but we're viewing an entry of a franchise, which has been instrumental in building and sustaining the prestige and integrity of an entire film studio, influential on an entire mode of animation, and intriguing to the masses, young and old, simultaneously creating and tapping into our nostalgias.
And...huh? You're asking if I love Toy Story?
Is that even a question?
The first three entries of the Toy Story series equally rank as my favorite PIXAR film of all time. It may not have the flowering, challenging, philosophical conceits of Inside Out or the aesthetic splendor of Coco, but as three films, it exists as a quintessential human interest package. No other PIXAR film compares to these in terms of continuing, bracing narratives, slick, sly, and sprightly humor, and, above all, captivating characters. With any of these films, you are guaranteed one thing: you are going to care about everyone on the screen. Everything is debatable, but every primary protagonist is crafted with more heart, diligence, and ardor than 95% of characters of most live-action films marketed at adults.
And yes, Toy Story 4 has near pitch-perfect levels of cheer, wit, and warmth. It also has a lot more emotional weight this time around...and even produced in me a bit of emptiness.
Que? Bare with me.
The plot starts with all of the toys being well-adjusted to their new life with Bonnie, the child they were donated to by Andy in the last movie. She's beginning kindergarten and, like any child, is very worried and apprehensive of it. She finds succor and joy in a craft she made, Forky, a spork with googly eyes, pipe cleaner arms, and popsicle-stick feet. What starts as the best efforts from Woody to include him in the group quickly transitions into being intensely alert and watchful for him. Forky sees himself as trash and constantly attempts to fling himself in trashcans, with Woody constantly throwing him out and keeping him with Bonnie.
This hits its unfortunate acme when the gang goes on a road trip with Bonnie and Forky throws himself out the moving RV's window with Woody also escaping to save him. While he bonds with Forky and explains to him that he is a toy that makes Bonnie feel comfortable and jovial, they soon divert from going back to Bonnie to an antique store where Woody hopes to find Bo Peep after being given away years ago. There, she meets Gabby Gabby, a vintage doll with a broken voice box who envies Woody's functioning voice box and she ensnares the pair to steal his voice box and become a toy worth possessing.
This leads to a whole journey with Woody escaping but trying to get back to the antique store, reuniting with Bo Peep and her new sidekick, Officer Giggles, and even Buzz stepping out of the RV to find Woody and ending up meeting two aggressive, violence-happy plush toys at a carnival. All in the name of Forky!
Yeah, if this movie sounds all over the place, it isn't. Emotionally, though, I thought that it initially was.
Everything else was on point to me. The voice actors cozy themselves so seamlessly and euphorically back into their roles that I'm surprised none of them recorded in reclining chairs with cups of coffee swathed in Snuggies. Newly initiated voice actors Christina Hendricks, Keanu Reeves, and fucking Key & Peele (!!!!) all delve into these new characters with child-like anticipation and graciousness. Even Don Rickles is brought back from the dead via archival footage. R.I.P.
This film also might be the funniest of all four entries. Several moments had me screaming in laughter, including one moment that showcases the violent plush toys' propensity to mentally craft and detail incipient acts of violence and a subsequent moment that negates and simplifies their efforts. It also manages to get a few chills in, as well. All I'll say is that if you thought the cymbal-playing monkey from Toy Story 3 was unnerving, then you'll be calling it a day with these Edgar Bergen-era ventriloquist dummies.
Think Dead Silence: The Animated Movie! But without the gore.
While every other aspect was on point, this film definitely jerked me around emotionally. Not that it submerged me in various lagoons of emotional power and plaintiveness to where I came out drenched and dripping with unforgettable sadness and monumental joy, but that it lead me on a trek in revealing its emotional purpose. For a while, I feared that this was the first moment in the Toy Story enterprise that would emotionally and mentally alienate me.
Forky enters the story, perceiving himself as trash and only trash. In this era of heightened awareness and layered dialogues of mental health, I felt that this would be used as the best possible analogy and lesson of self-worth. It would be the most consummate method of doing it, given how much time has passed within the narrative and our social climate. Using an object not typically viewed as a tangible toy, but brings amusement and comfort to a child, but yet it itself only views itself as being confined by standard expectations and can't exceed beyond that, or better yet that it shouldn't, could've come around full-circle as a message on how every individual has worth and provides worth and that you can overcome any dictated confinement.
But while it also is revealed that trash makes Forky comfortable, Woody just kinda uses that as an analogy for how he can be a useful toy and then it's kinda just resolved.
OK, well...maybe it'll tap in on the unfortunate reality that you can alter your environment, alter yourself, and invest as much focus and effort into an end goal and still have it postponed and delayed further. This is in reference to a later scene, which I will not give away. However, that is resolved rapidly, as well. Given the new characters, some of which are hopeful to be with a child and all of them eager to be played with, I feared but was almost ready to gruffly submit to the fact, that this would be another simple conclusion where Woody was in the unequivocal right.
In some ways, I thought of this to be derivative of Toy Story 2, what with the internal dilemma of whether security lies in being in a home, but potentially being forgotten, or if it lies in having an ambiguous, yet spontaneous existence outside of a home, and also with Woody receiving a change to his design, which I will also not spoil. And again, with all the new characters, I thought it was going to be even more derivative and everything would be tied up fancily, tamely, and sycophantically.
And then, the twist happens. And I was stunned, emotionally, but yet still felt puzzled and almost beleaguered logically.
Can you deliver such an existentialist moral about purpose and free will and fulfillment and adequately apply it to toys? Clearly, toys are designed to distract or satiate our selfish needs of entertainment, so how can this possibly translate? Easy. These toys, to us, are not just toys. These toys, to our viewpoint, are sentient. They have alive personalities. They go beyond our selfish needs of entertainment and have actually transfixed us with their own quandaries of existence.
But even beyond that, can this go beyond the deep-rooted affinity created for these characters and actually be germane in the real world? And even in the context of the movie, what purpose can they possibly have? And in the end, my intense pondering and pensive hypothesizing is what brought me to the revelation that, in a subterranean way, they gave us their most daring moral to date: Life is not comprised solely of easy answers. Any question that can be raised about the ending, in my opinion, can be rebutted with, "Who knows?"
And in a way, I guess you can make a connection to the real world. Think about this. The first three films ended by emphasizing the value of toys on a child and how eager toys are to delivering that fulfillment. I'm sure children saw all of these movies and vowed to cherish their toys more significantly. Well...do you really think that that happened in a zealous, overwhelmingly transformative way? To some of their toys, maybe, but they most likely already had something of a bond with them anyways. To all of their toys, hell no!
Now, those same kids are most likely adults or currently in that ragged process of adulting and are, whether they like it or not, having to take steps that will divorce them from some of the comforts of childhood. What's going to happen? Again, who knows? This film is probably the most humane of the four films because, in one of the most subtle, understated ways, it actually empowers that audience. Instead of teaching them to appreciate the simple, pulchritudinous facets of existence, it challenges them to go on step further: to exist as an individual. Even at the coda of Toy Story 3, your investment was still primarily with the toys and not with Andy. But with Toy Story 4 and how everything shifts drastically, you eventually learn that the most valuable aspect of life is its uncertainty.
Oh yeah, about that feeling of emptiness? I think that's literally a "me" thing. I think that it is a testament to how I have grown with all of these colorful, spirited, admirable characters that a change of the guard like this is not just the end of an arc, but a veritably heartfelt, almost dispiriting ending. To have such a massive motley of characters and be embracing of them and beguiled of them through four movies over a twenty-four year period and still feel such a poignant, intransigent, addicting connection with them just as years prior justifies and denotes the power of a moment such as at the ending. While Inside Out may have the most powerful moral, Toy Story 4 certainly has the gutsiest. Admittedly, that forlorn sense of emptiness kinda detaches me from it ever so mildly, which is why I don't send it up to the same echelon as the first three, but again, that's a "me" thing.
If I'm having such a gut reaction and an unnerved, anxious, quasi-paranoid concern for characters as these, then they will always have a friend in me.
But yeah, go again and make Toy Story 5! See what happens, burros!
RATING: Four out of four stars!
And...huh? You're asking if I love Toy Story?
Is that even a question?
The first three entries of the Toy Story series equally rank as my favorite PIXAR film of all time. It may not have the flowering, challenging, philosophical conceits of Inside Out or the aesthetic splendor of Coco, but as three films, it exists as a quintessential human interest package. No other PIXAR film compares to these in terms of continuing, bracing narratives, slick, sly, and sprightly humor, and, above all, captivating characters. With any of these films, you are guaranteed one thing: you are going to care about everyone on the screen. Everything is debatable, but every primary protagonist is crafted with more heart, diligence, and ardor than 95% of characters of most live-action films marketed at adults.
And yes, Toy Story 4 has near pitch-perfect levels of cheer, wit, and warmth. It also has a lot more emotional weight this time around...and even produced in me a bit of emptiness.
Que? Bare with me.
The plot starts with all of the toys being well-adjusted to their new life with Bonnie, the child they were donated to by Andy in the last movie. She's beginning kindergarten and, like any child, is very worried and apprehensive of it. She finds succor and joy in a craft she made, Forky, a spork with googly eyes, pipe cleaner arms, and popsicle-stick feet. What starts as the best efforts from Woody to include him in the group quickly transitions into being intensely alert and watchful for him. Forky sees himself as trash and constantly attempts to fling himself in trashcans, with Woody constantly throwing him out and keeping him with Bonnie.
This hits its unfortunate acme when the gang goes on a road trip with Bonnie and Forky throws himself out the moving RV's window with Woody also escaping to save him. While he bonds with Forky and explains to him that he is a toy that makes Bonnie feel comfortable and jovial, they soon divert from going back to Bonnie to an antique store where Woody hopes to find Bo Peep after being given away years ago. There, she meets Gabby Gabby, a vintage doll with a broken voice box who envies Woody's functioning voice box and she ensnares the pair to steal his voice box and become a toy worth possessing.
This leads to a whole journey with Woody escaping but trying to get back to the antique store, reuniting with Bo Peep and her new sidekick, Officer Giggles, and even Buzz stepping out of the RV to find Woody and ending up meeting two aggressive, violence-happy plush toys at a carnival. All in the name of Forky!
Yeah, if this movie sounds all over the place, it isn't. Emotionally, though, I thought that it initially was.
Everything else was on point to me. The voice actors cozy themselves so seamlessly and euphorically back into their roles that I'm surprised none of them recorded in reclining chairs with cups of coffee swathed in Snuggies. Newly initiated voice actors Christina Hendricks, Keanu Reeves, and fucking Key & Peele (!!!!) all delve into these new characters with child-like anticipation and graciousness. Even Don Rickles is brought back from the dead via archival footage. R.I.P.
This film also might be the funniest of all four entries. Several moments had me screaming in laughter, including one moment that showcases the violent plush toys' propensity to mentally craft and detail incipient acts of violence and a subsequent moment that negates and simplifies their efforts. It also manages to get a few chills in, as well. All I'll say is that if you thought the cymbal-playing monkey from Toy Story 3 was unnerving, then you'll be calling it a day with these Edgar Bergen-era ventriloquist dummies.
Think Dead Silence: The Animated Movie! But without the gore.
While every other aspect was on point, this film definitely jerked me around emotionally. Not that it submerged me in various lagoons of emotional power and plaintiveness to where I came out drenched and dripping with unforgettable sadness and monumental joy, but that it lead me on a trek in revealing its emotional purpose. For a while, I feared that this was the first moment in the Toy Story enterprise that would emotionally and mentally alienate me.
Forky enters the story, perceiving himself as trash and only trash. In this era of heightened awareness and layered dialogues of mental health, I felt that this would be used as the best possible analogy and lesson of self-worth. It would be the most consummate method of doing it, given how much time has passed within the narrative and our social climate. Using an object not typically viewed as a tangible toy, but brings amusement and comfort to a child, but yet it itself only views itself as being confined by standard expectations and can't exceed beyond that, or better yet that it shouldn't, could've come around full-circle as a message on how every individual has worth and provides worth and that you can overcome any dictated confinement.
But while it also is revealed that trash makes Forky comfortable, Woody just kinda uses that as an analogy for how he can be a useful toy and then it's kinda just resolved.
OK, well...maybe it'll tap in on the unfortunate reality that you can alter your environment, alter yourself, and invest as much focus and effort into an end goal and still have it postponed and delayed further. This is in reference to a later scene, which I will not give away. However, that is resolved rapidly, as well. Given the new characters, some of which are hopeful to be with a child and all of them eager to be played with, I feared but was almost ready to gruffly submit to the fact, that this would be another simple conclusion where Woody was in the unequivocal right.
In some ways, I thought of this to be derivative of Toy Story 2, what with the internal dilemma of whether security lies in being in a home, but potentially being forgotten, or if it lies in having an ambiguous, yet spontaneous existence outside of a home, and also with Woody receiving a change to his design, which I will also not spoil. And again, with all the new characters, I thought it was going to be even more derivative and everything would be tied up fancily, tamely, and sycophantically.
And then, the twist happens. And I was stunned, emotionally, but yet still felt puzzled and almost beleaguered logically.
Can you deliver such an existentialist moral about purpose and free will and fulfillment and adequately apply it to toys? Clearly, toys are designed to distract or satiate our selfish needs of entertainment, so how can this possibly translate? Easy. These toys, to us, are not just toys. These toys, to our viewpoint, are sentient. They have alive personalities. They go beyond our selfish needs of entertainment and have actually transfixed us with their own quandaries of existence.
But even beyond that, can this go beyond the deep-rooted affinity created for these characters and actually be germane in the real world? And even in the context of the movie, what purpose can they possibly have? And in the end, my intense pondering and pensive hypothesizing is what brought me to the revelation that, in a subterranean way, they gave us their most daring moral to date: Life is not comprised solely of easy answers. Any question that can be raised about the ending, in my opinion, can be rebutted with, "Who knows?"
And in a way, I guess you can make a connection to the real world. Think about this. The first three films ended by emphasizing the value of toys on a child and how eager toys are to delivering that fulfillment. I'm sure children saw all of these movies and vowed to cherish their toys more significantly. Well...do you really think that that happened in a zealous, overwhelmingly transformative way? To some of their toys, maybe, but they most likely already had something of a bond with them anyways. To all of their toys, hell no!
Now, those same kids are most likely adults or currently in that ragged process of adulting and are, whether they like it or not, having to take steps that will divorce them from some of the comforts of childhood. What's going to happen? Again, who knows? This film is probably the most humane of the four films because, in one of the most subtle, understated ways, it actually empowers that audience. Instead of teaching them to appreciate the simple, pulchritudinous facets of existence, it challenges them to go on step further: to exist as an individual. Even at the coda of Toy Story 3, your investment was still primarily with the toys and not with Andy. But with Toy Story 4 and how everything shifts drastically, you eventually learn that the most valuable aspect of life is its uncertainty.
Oh yeah, about that feeling of emptiness? I think that's literally a "me" thing. I think that it is a testament to how I have grown with all of these colorful, spirited, admirable characters that a change of the guard like this is not just the end of an arc, but a veritably heartfelt, almost dispiriting ending. To have such a massive motley of characters and be embracing of them and beguiled of them through four movies over a twenty-four year period and still feel such a poignant, intransigent, addicting connection with them just as years prior justifies and denotes the power of a moment such as at the ending. While Inside Out may have the most powerful moral, Toy Story 4 certainly has the gutsiest. Admittedly, that forlorn sense of emptiness kinda detaches me from it ever so mildly, which is why I don't send it up to the same echelon as the first three, but again, that's a "me" thing.
If I'm having such a gut reaction and an unnerved, anxious, quasi-paranoid concern for characters as these, then they will always have a friend in me.
But yeah, go again and make Toy Story 5! See what happens, burros!
RATING: Four out of four stars!
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