Toy Story 4

Nine years ago, after Woody, Buzz and their landfill-avoiding friends were bequeathed by a college-age Andy to the young Bonnie, it appeared their story had definitively ended. They’d let Andy go. Toy Story 3 was a fitting and deeply touching farewell. So you’d hope Pixar has a very good (narrative) reason to unpack these characters once more.

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The strongest fourth series instalment since Mad Max: Fury Road.

 

In truth, Toy Story 4 doesn’t feel quite as coherent or emotionally compelling as the previous three. Where Toy Stories 2 and 3 were perfectly cut jigsaw pieces that completed a bigger picture we never previously realised was there, _4_ feels distinct; less an essential new chapter than an interesting epilogue.

 

Woody and Buzz are no longer the buddy-act unit they were in the previous films. In fact, Buzz’s storyline feels almost tacked on here, spun around what should be a one-off gag about him finding his “inner voice” through his pre-recorded Space Ranger catchphrases. Meanwhile, Jessie, Bullseye, Hamm, Rex and co barely feature at all, with little more to do than hang back at ‘base camp’ and fret about what’s happening to Woody.

 

However, there is much to enjoy in what is happening to everyone’s favourite sheriff. Firstly, his new buddy act with the confused spork-turned-toy Forky, voiced by Arrested Development and Veep’s Tony Hale. Freshly created by Bonnie, he’s a loveable mess of a plaything, with mismatched googly eyes, a wax strip for a mouth and a snapped lollypop stick for feet. Unlike the other toys, his raison d’être is unclear. Woody insists he exists for Bonnie to love and play with; but all Forky wants to do is nestle in the cosy oblivion of a waste bin. Woody’s obsession with mentoring the former spork, and keeping him with Bonnie, is really the rag-doll cowboy’s way of dealing with his own mid-life crisis. He’s not as important to Bonnie as he was to Andy, and he’s getting played with less and less. But he doesn’t know what else he can do.

This feeds into Woody’s second narrative strand, which, in a bold first for this series, is a love story. With her absence in Toy Story 3 explained via a handy pre-credits flashback sequence, Annie Potts’ Bo Peep gloriously returns, reunited with Woody after having lived for years as a lost toy — and all the happier for it. She is entertainingly recast as a wry, resourceful survivor, full of grit and self-reliance, and bemused by Woody’s continuing dependence on being owned by a kid. In arguably the series’ most grown-up storyline yet, the film asks whether two people who were once very close, but whose lives have been pulled in such drastically different directions, could ever make it work again.

 

Not that this is trying to be a miniature plastic Casablanca (“We’ll always have Andy’s”). Like former Toy Story films, the emphasis is firmly on delivering laughs, throwing in some scares, and thrilling us with madcap action.