Toy Story 4

It’s difficult to think of too many essential four-quels. Too many are failed money-spinning ideas and struggle to justify their own existence.

Well, Pixar laugh in the face of preconceptions and have given us an epilogue to a perfect ending with Toy Story 4.

As immaculate as the trilogy is, there can’t have been many who were hankering to see more from our favourite toys knowing the only direction Pixar could head is down. Miraculously, bringing the band back together for one final goodbye works better than anyone could have hoped, like finding a fun side quest to complete after completing the story mode on your favourite videogame.

We’re presented with a different moral: what is our purpose? How do we continually justify our existence? This is the, rather heavy, burden that Woody bears across this film. He gets played with less by new owner Bonnie but still wants nothing more than to see her happy. When she creates her own toy to get her through a tough first day of kindergarten, the Sheriff takes on the responsibility of ensuring that this new creation: Forky, picks up his mantle.

As you’ll know from the trailer, Forky is a spork with the voice of Arrested Development’s Tony Hale. He is less important to the drive of the film than the trailer makes out in terms of screen time, but essential in terms of kick-starting Woody’s mission. Their odd couple pairing brings belly laughs galore, although there is a tad more visual humour in this film than smart scripting like before.

Without giving too much away, the toys are taken on a road trip before, inevitably, getting side-tracked. Fortunately, the film never resorts to introducing MacGuffins to flesh out the plot, instead giving logical and satisfying breathing space to the journey that leaves the payoff earned.

There’s some brilliant throwbacks to the previous Toy Storys, as well as some intriguing nods to other Pixar films which lends some credence to the brilliant ‘Pixar shared universe’ theory (most easily spotted on first viewing are a girl in Bonnie’s class looking suspiciously like Monsters Inc’s Boo and Bonnie’s Mum potentially being a relation to Riley’s Mother from Inside Out.)

There’s also some hilarious allusions to other films including a brilliantly bizarre ongoing debt to The Shining.

It doesn’t reach the heights of the first three, mainly because it so obviously feels apart from that franchise. Whilst the first three concluded Andy’s saga, though, this closes Woodys and he is certainly befitting of that. Unfortunately, this does leave the other original characters with short shrift. Whilst Bo Peep gets a glorious return to the spotlight, Buzz’s arc in this film starts promisingly (with him trying to discover his ‘inner voice and conscience') but doesn’t pay off as it could.

The new additions are brilliant though; Key and Peele’s conjoined stuffed toys offer a lot of the slapstick humour and Keanu Reeve’s Duke Kaboom steals every scene he’s in.

Bring your tissues for the Avengers: Endgame aping ending to one of the best animated franchises of all time. Pixar reach for the sky and add another star to it yet again.

4 stars ****