The Problem with...Toy Story 4

The Toys are back in town.

The gang return for a fourth installment of the most important animation franchise in motion picture history; it is quite hard now to fathom how much of a game changing production Toy Story was in 1995 and how much of an influence the work has had since that release.

When Pixar made the first full-length computer animation film about toys that came to life once the kids left the room was a stroke of genius in original storytelling coupled with ground breaking technological achievement.

Pixar followed up with a huge range of films from underwater to crawling ants, before returning to the play area with Toy Story 2 where Woody and Buzz left the bedroom and further into the wider world.

In Toy Story 3, the trilogy was completed with an ending of the page as the toys faced death in the face and survived to tell the story. These characters were survivors and we were with them all the way, the circle (to borrow from another Disney classic) of life had been lived. TS3 ended with the group being moved to a new child's bedroom and altering from a young boy owner to a new young girl and her active imagination.

So we come to 2019's Toy Story 4, when we re-meet the group Josie has usurped Woody as the Sheriff of the group being somewhat banished to the back of the closet while others are played with. Woody's fear is that he is gathering dust in his old age, so he hops into Bonnie's backpack on her first day of kindergarden where he witnesses Bonnie's imagination first hand culminating in her creating Forky (Tony Hale) from a spork, curtain wire and lollipop sticks.

Travelling back home, Forky comes to life which is perhaps my first issue of note with the film. Forky is a creation of a child, the rest of the toys are built as toys for the purposes of entertaining children by higher powers (adults), so is Forky a statement on children's power of imagination that anything can become animated if it is created such as a disposable utensil from the trash. Forky also provides the first scare of the film, the first and certainly not the last of which there are many.

The scares are numerous especially in Second Chance Antiques, a store Woody encounters on Bonnie's roadtrip in Main Street USA, a store where antiques are awaiting a second chance at life as do unwanted toys - especially Gabby Gabby a toy with a faulty voice box and Victor - a ventriloquist doll of which there is 4 of him.  Victor is from a by gone era and his scary nature as an ominous threat of torment is used to frightening effect but overdone to the point of providing too many jump scares for what is aimed at a child friendly audience.

Yet perhaps they get away with it because the audience of this film has grown up since the original Toy Story over 20 years ago, so the jump scare is while telegraphed not that scary to that media savvy group, yet for a new child audience this would be far too scary with the dark corridors in a dingy second-hand store.

By the end, the jailbreak to rescue Forky from the hands of Gabby is saved by the great addition of Duke Caboom (Keanu Reeves) an Evil Kenevel rip-off but his characterisation is brilliantly rendered, but there is a moment when Bonnie's backpack is left at the store. This is left there somehow as we do not see Bonnie leave it there and it is a matter of narrative convenience to help the gang escape the store.

Credit for the film is the use of female voice actors who come front and centre and outshine the stalwarts of Hanks and Allen, Annie Potts in particular as Bo Beep is exceptional getting her point across and bringing new life to a character that was one-dimensional in the first two films years ago.

In contrast to the tandem of Duck and Bunny (Peele and Kay), the use of a comedy duo helps the natural back and forth of their rapport yet too quickly it becomes familiar and long in the tooth in contrast to the quirkiness of Caboom.

All in all, the finale of the film was shooting for a grand goodbye to the group, instead it was handled somewhat slapdash and unfortunately does not make sense ultimately in the grandest scheme of things, this is a group who should be together no matter and the ending left this viewer a little cold.

There is even a suggestion perhaps of a further installment, personally that is not required, the toys are great but perhaps that idea would be best left on the shelf.