Hollywood can’t make a good movie anymore. This is partially because of its own preoccupation with wokeness, which comes at the expense of artful excellence, but it’s also partially a lack of storytelling genius.
The only movies people get really excited to watch these days are smut (“Wuthering Heights,” “The Housemaid”), viral sensations (“It Ends with Us”), or remakes and sequels of actually good movies from the past (“The Devil Wears Prada 2,” live-action “Moana,” “Toy Story 5”). There are very, very few exceptions.
Many people went to see “Toy Story 5” for the nostalgia – I know I did. The kids who grew up watching the early movies are having kids of their own now and want to recreate their childhood experiences with these hilarious, touching, well-acted, well-animated, and well-done movies.
As is typical, these new movies don’t present as well as their earlier counterparts.
In the newest movie, Woody the cowboy is balding, aging, and fat, playing second fiddle to his feminist, girl-boss girlfriend, Bo Peep. A complete has-been, Woody wears a bandana as a Western cape in an obvious mid-life crisis moment that becomes a recurring bit in the film. In one of the closing scenes, Bo Peep exemplifies the contemptuous love which the female heroines in the film have for their men by taking the driver’s seat and whisking Woody off into the sunset in an on-the-nose reversal of your standard hero/heroine love story.
Buzz may not suffer the goofy aging that Woody’s character is subjected to, but the feminism in his relationship with Jessie the cowgirl is even more grating and ridiculous. Throughout the movie, Buzz drops hints about his intention to propose to Jessie. He’s obviously nervous, and at first this seems to be a refreshing and heartwarming next step for the love story between Buzz and Jessie. Yet Hollywood can’t let a bunch of kids see traditional marriage as an unadulterated good, so Jessie is once again cast as the fearless leader who is only in love with Buzz out of the benevolence of her own heart.
At the movie’s climax, Buzz proposes, but can barely get the words out due to nerves. Jessie interjects, accepting the proposal in what would have been a heartwarming scene if it weren’t for an incredibly cringe-inducing moment where Buzz kicks up his heels in girlish glee at her kiss. Their wedding scene depicts Buzz walking down the aisle as a bride in a kilt (ahem) and getting tipped over for a kiss from the alpha Jessie at the end of the ceremony.
The adulteration of Buzz’s storyline serves absolutely no point and has no coherence with the rest of his character. His character arc in “Toy Story 5” serves only as a subtle reminder to adult viewers that male heroes simply do not exist except as a punchline to a massive feminist joke that everyone, especially one’s girlfriend, is perpetuating.
Beyond the feminist overtones, the storyline itself leaves much to be desired. What began as a prescient warning about how screens are sapping children’s creativity, forcing them to grow up too fast, exposing them to bullying, and isolating them where they were promised socialization, ended as a confusing resolution that seems only vaguely heartwarming. Bonnie struggles to make friends, not only because of her own shyness, but also because her peers are glued to their devices and completely uninterested in social activity at all. Her parents, much like today’s parents, purchase a Lilypad, a device that promises to connect Bonnie with unlimited friends. Bonnie quickly learns that these are not real friendships, but she changes her loves and identities to fit into the tech-obsessed world, growing up overnight, shunning her toys, and spending every moment possible on her device. Then the bullying begins, and it is only then that her parents notice that the device could be having the opposite effect from what they hoped.
This setup seemed almost perfect in its condemnation of tech in childhood, as well as the role parents play in perpetuating it. But the resolution was lackluster. Jessie is about to declare victory over Lilypad when the writers suddenly remember that villains don’t exist in children’s movies anymore. So Lilypad and Jessie team up to connect Bonnie with a true friend. Jessie realizes that Lilypad cares for Bonnie as much as she does and somehow Bonnie and her new friend Blaze achieve what no child that age would have the mental fortitude to accomplish, namely, integrating Lilypad into their imaginative play without sacrificing their mental creativity with their toys.
The writers seem to want us to walk away thinking that tech can actually make us more creative – as if we hadn’t watched the first half of the movie where every child was caught in a screentime psychosis and the devices delivered the opposite of the social life promised to their users. The final lesson of the movie regarding technology is pretty simple – technology can be a force for good if used properly – but fails to acknowledge that screens for children are sinister because children are developmentally incapable of handling the dopamine hits of a personal device.
In the end, “Toy Story 5” would have been a disappointment had I not been so accustomed to being disappointed by modern movies. Because of this, I was not surprised at all to be hit with preachiness and lameness rather than entertaining sentimentality.
Sarah Wilder is a writer and commentator on culture and the family. Formerly a reporter at the Daily Caller, her work has been published in Chronicles Magazine, The Federalist, and The American Mind.
This culture article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal, a project of 1819 News. To comment on this article, please email [email protected]. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News.
