Toy Story 5 is the funniest the series has been for me, even if it might end up being one of its more forgettable entries. Toy Story 3 is still the franchise’s most profound when it arrived 15 years after the original film and spoke directly to an audience that had grown up with Andy. It gave people the kind of nostalgia and continuity they were ready for.

So, when Pixar finds an angle through the takeover of iPads and the Roblox-ification of childhood, we are primed with a very predictable premise. The toys are no longer competing only with time or growing up. They are competing with screens that know how to keep a child looking. 

Whether that is a genuine attempt to stay relevant or simply another way of keeping the franchise alive, it is hard not to admire the idea. 

What lingers is its lens on connection and what holds us together as the world keeps changing, even in the whimsy of a child. And the end credits song, Taylor Swift’s “I Knew It, I Knew You,” which carries us back to her country-pop roots.

Jessie steps forward

Aside from the introduction of tech play, the first sequence already makes it clear that Jessie (Joan Cusack) is taking on a larger emotional role here. Woody (Tom Hanks) gets some time to polish his boots before eventually being pulled back into the chaos with the rest of the gang. Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) gets caught in his own strange space-age mess with the kind of high-speed toy panic this franchise loves to stage.

Bonnie ditches toys for tech play

Bonnie (Scarlett Spears) is basically the new Andy now, except her childhood has more tabs open. She still transforms the gang into unwitting characters from different genres and eras in 2D treatment when she plays. But, she’s also feeling ostracized and pressured by screen-ager friends.

Sitting nearby is Lilypad (Greta Lee), a frog-shaped smart tablet bright enough to make the toys look a little dimmer. It looks exactly like one of those iPads with a green, funky case that you see kids carrying around at family functions. It is one more thing to play with and one more little world calling her name. The toys are still there, but now they are waiting between notifications and an attempt at sabotaging batteries. 

When all these attempts go wrong, the gang’s plan is to find Bonnie a friend who can still meet her in imaginative play. 

Is the screen the villain?

What Bonnie goes through as an eight-year-old is a reality for a lot of kids whose screen time stretches beyond moderation. In some ways, it feels a notch higher than Gen Zs and Millennials spending most of the week glued to work laptops while still trying to carve out time on a Sunday to “live a life.”

The inevitability of tech play is announced like an impending doom when Bonnie spots the twins she wants to play with lolling on a couch in a bleak living room, their faces looking washed in the glow of their phones. It’s more unsettling than Sid’s vicious grin in the first film, or Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear’s refusal to redeem himself in Toy Story 3.

Bonnie’s friends even plan a sleepover just to end up on their Lilypads, not going a day without talking to each other face-to-face. It’s a room filled with excited kids slowly drained of energy by the devices in their hands. It’s strange enough that the kids packed into LAN parties and computer shops of our time, armed with the most creative trash talks, suggest a healthier version of real-world connection.

By the end, what keeps the film from becoming too preachy is that Lilypad is not treated like a Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear by-product. The toys still matter, but the tablets do too. One gives shape to touch and make-believe, and the other opens up a metaphysical escape. Parents need to understand that it’s a matter of finding the balance between enough screen to discover new worlds. And enough real life for their kids to remember how to build one themselves.

The things that raised us

I lost touch with toys years ago, so I tried to make the story’s angle make sense through my grief for the glossies and magazines that raised me. I thought about the Filbar’s and grocery newsstands I grew up nagging my parents to take me to. Now Filbar’s fully houses collectibles and toys, which is its own little irony. 

The magazines left us. At least my favorites did. Now they survive as digital flipbooks on my iPad, which surprisingly works for my tactile self. Though these devices can never recreate the wrinkling of a spine that suggests I probably loved my mags too hard. I do love the illusion of turning the pages and being able to carry it everywhere. It does act like a thread to my younger, more idealistic self. Which, for me, is an important kind of connection.

And maybe Toy Story 5 circles around the idea. That we never really lose the essence of fun and connection, even if the world changes. It is an innate thing to us. We may go to our screens to virtually meet people, then we come back to the small shared spaces where the sense of belonging is tangibly real. 

Right now, fun lives in both the AFKs and in the realms of social media—half-present, half-elsewhere, but wholeheartedly connected.