Toy Story 4 (2019)
The first two Toy Story movies means a great deal to me. They are among the absolute top of Pixar movies. The third one was surprisingly good, especially because at the time I thought it really didn’t need another movie, but they proved otherwise. Never got around to watching the fourth, but now my youngest daughter has taken a liking to the series and she has seen all of them - probably multiple times. So to catch up, I sat down with her to watch this - and it is a perfectly good Toy Story movie. But I also think the sequel fatigue is starting to kick in, as this doesn’t quite have the same level of raison d’être.
It looks absolutely amazing I must say. Computer animation sure has made light years in progress. It is all kinds of impressive with how real the environment looks. I also like the themes this movie brings up, with basically the meaning of life for these toys, as they are struggling to redefine their purpose as independent beings and not merely as something that needs or belongs to a child. It handles that rather well. What I think doesn’t work as well as previously, is the whole repetitive action rescue mission narrative. All the films are based around similar plot structures, but they all seemed more like a complete purposeful story. Here there is mostly just a string of scenes tied together by the plot hitting reset with one of the toys getting lost yet again, right after being found, so the story can continue for 20 more minutes.
Still, Toy Story proves that is a franchise that literally keep its relevance for multiple generations and I am looking forward to taking the kids to see the fifth one when it comes next summer.
Rating: 3.5