I saw Toy Story 5 and honestly I did like it! I'm a big Toy Story fan. It was much better than TS4, but that's not a high bar to clear haha. I really really liked that it was Jessie's story, that was really necessary, Woody's story is so done, and even Buzz's has been done and redone a bunch of times. Jessie is such a neat character and I think they took really good care of her. The culmination of her arc and her abandonment issues felt satisfying. I liked how useless (maybe that's a loaded word ha) Buzz was and how she took charge (after what, he crushed on her for 20 years?) Also it's the first time in 5 movies we've gotten to hear Jessie's pullstring lines! !!
I was a little less interested in the A plot with Lilypad. I think Lily had potential to be interesting, but it felt like a slight repeat of the last movie's villain arc, and her switch came at you fast. I wish they just spent a little more time with her coming to her reasons for the choice she made.
There was some jokes that felt homophobic in the beginning but the ending made me feel like maybe? It was celebrating gender diversity slightly? But it was still kinda a joke. So. Hm.
Ngl the Woody stuff felt unnecessary to me. I LOVE Woody and Buzz so naturally I didn't hate it, and obv he's the face of the series so he'll be there, but omg, the trailers kept emphasizing all this stuff with Woody out in the field and whatever but that just wasn't really in the movie at all. Bo Peep had like two scenes? It was weird. Disney has always had misleading advertising but it was weird.
I liked the cute ADHD representation with Bonnie, and I think it's a very real feeling when you are neurodivergent and just can't quite mesh with your peers. I do wish someone told her friends' parents they were bullying her? But important message that real friends won't do that and that it's okay to turn off the chat.
Speaking of, I DID think it was funny that Disney didn't say we should limit screentime on kids iPads lol. Like the parents in the beginning said Bonnie would have a screen time limit, and then never enforced it because they were always on their screens, which is a very real phenomenon. But then they just still never enforced it even in the end LOL. Of course, kids spending less time on their iPad would be bad for Disney's bottom line, I'm sure kids are going to watch this over and over and over on their iPads in fact, lol.
I'm happy that the movie did focus more on the kids in general though, I feel like none of them so far have really done so as much and so I appreciated that direction as just something different and original, and I think the story and message came across well. I teared up at the tree swing part (iykyk).
I think it tried to broach a couple Toy Story universe things that people always bring up, like the Buzzes having an innate instinct to hide, and Bonnie being able to change around their stories and make stuff 'canon.' I wasn't mad about either of those. I know some people take those things very seriously ha.
Also, they evoked the Vietnam War with Buzz Lightyears at the beginning. That was crazy.