The opening of Toy Story 5 was a big event for my family. The Toy Story movies mean so much to us that when the war with Iran flared up about two weeks ago, my first thought was whether the area where Danny, my 30-year-old son who is on the autism spectrum, lives, would be attacked (it was) – whereas my second thought was whether Toy Story 5 would open on schedule.
And it did. And we got to go last Thursday on opening day. Toy Story 2 was the first movie Danny ever saw, when he was three years old – a few weeks after he was diagnosed with autism. As soon as he saw a Toy Story video, he fell in love with both films.
For the past 26 years, he has watched Toy Story 2 every Friday afternoon – for over a decade, he also watched the first Toy Story film on Fridays – and I’ve watched it with him, meaning we have seen it well over 1,000 times.
Danny can’t explain why he loves these movies so deeply, but I believe it is because they have two basic themes he can relate to, unlike many kids’ movies with complicated plots, preachy messages, and elaborate settings.
These themes are: Your toys come alive when you leave the room; it’s scary that people you love might abandon you; and you need a friend to help you through the tough times.
The first movie opens when Woody the cowboy doll (voiced by Tom Hanks) is upset because his owner, Andy, gets a Buzz Lightyear space ranger doll (voiced by Tim Allen), which becomes Andy’s favorite toy.
How Woody and Buzz navigate their rivalry, become best friends, and go through all kinds of heroic adventures together is at the heart of the Toy Story universe.
An unchanging film in a changing world
For Danny, the Friday ritual of watching Toy Story 2 gives him comfort. The world may change in ways he cannot anticipate or understand, often scaring him, like wars and people running to bomb shelters. But Toy Story 2 remains blessedly the same.
We have learned endless trivia from seeing the film so often. About 18 years ago, I noticed that while Andy has written his name on the bottom of his toys’ feet, with Woody, his first toy, the “N” is backward, as little children tend to write it. However, on the bottom of Buzz’s boot, the “N” is correct, because Andy got the toy when he was several years older.
I interviewed Galyn Susman, who was the supervising technical director on Toy Story 2, when she visited Jerusalem to give a master class, and we spoke about some of the details, like this, that we had come to appreciate. She said I knew more about the movie than she did, which I doubt, but I took it as a compliment.
Danny watched Toy Story 3 once in the theater and a few times on video, but it never replaced the first two for him. There were too many new characters for him to absorb, I think.
In 2019, when Toy Story 4 was released, he wasn’t feeling very good about life. He needed to leave a school he loved because he had “aged out” at 21, and the new solution I found for him was a place that sounded good but wasn’t working out, leaving him lonely and isolated.
When I suggested going to Toy Story 4, he gave an emphatic, “No!”
I saw it on my own, of course, and I couldn’t imagine there was anything in a convoluted plot about Woody going off with Bo Peep (Annie Potts) on his own to search for lost toys that would spark his imagination.
But now Danny is living and working during the week in a place he loves, and he is far more relaxed and flexible, so when I suggested seeing Toy Story 5, he agreed, and we went on the first day.
So, what was his review of the movie? It kept him engaged throughout, and he recited much of the dialogue after the characters, a sign he was interested, and said “Uh oh!” a few times.
I doubt it will replace the first two films in his heart, but he enjoyed himself. Each movie has expanded the story by introducing new characters, and the focus is much less on the two original heroes, which is both good and bad.
Pixar/Disney is not repeating the formula, but not all the new characters are as engaging for him as the originals were.
The plot of 'Toy Story 5'
Toy Story 5 is about the toys’ new owner, Bonnie (Scarlett Spears), who has no friends because she still plays with her toys, while all the other kids play online games on tablets. She gets her own tablet called Lilypad (Greta Lee), and the toys are scandalized, especially Jessie the cowgirl doll (voiced by Joan Cusack).
But while it seems as if Lily Pad will be the new villain, it turns out that she is able to connect Bonnie to girls from her dance class, who have ignored her in person, in seconds.
The main story becomes about how the toys make sure she finds a true friend. Through a complex sequence of events that was way too abstract for Danny to follow, the toys maneuver her into becoming close to Blaze (voiced by Mykal-Michelle Harris), another girl who still loves toys.
Most of the movie involves the top toys – Jessie, Woody, and Buzz – running around together and separately to get the girls together. Lilypad turns out not to be a villain at all, and in fact, there is no villain, which is a shame, because a movie needs an antagonist.
The villains in the early movies – Sid in Toy Story 1 and the Prospector and Al in Toy Story 2 – were wonderfully awful, and Danny always knew who the bad guys were.
However, I did appreciate the fact that the movie is not all about how tech is ruining kids, as the trailer indicated it might be, a boring message that would have been out of place in the Toy Story universe.
When Jessie finds herself in Blaze’s house, she rescues some of Blaze’s old childhood devices, which have been dumped in a drawer, including Smarty Pants, a potty-training device voiced by Conan O’Brien that makes a lot of bathroom jokes kids will love.
The movie gently acknowledges that people do have lots of fun with tech – Jessie is forced to abandon her anti-tech stance when she gets addicted to playing one of Smarty Pants’ games – and that technology can coexist alongside toys.
There is also a subplot about a shipment of Buzz Lightyear dolls that was shipwrecked and then activated, which plays a role in the conclusion. These scenes and all the moments when Buzz and Woody were back together were Danny’s favorite.
There are a few scattered jokes for parents, as there always are, especially that Woody has something of a bald spot now, and his belt fits him a bit more tightly than it used to.
It’s a nod to the fact that Hanks and Allen, who were in their early 40s when the first film came out, are now in their early 70s. But their voices are just as wonderful as ever, as is Cusack’s as Jessie. What a long, fun trip these movies have been.
Taylor Swift’s “I Knew It, I Knew You” made for a nice end-credits song for Danny to dance to on the way out – as he always does at movies – but I was sad that Buzz and Woody went their separate ways again at the end.
I think this was supposed to show some kind of maturity, that Woody now has a life with Bo Peep and Buzz is with Jessie, breaking up the most intense bromance in the world of animated films and ensuring that the two won’t become the Bert and Ernie of the big screen.
But Danny and I have always loved the promise that the two make to each other, that they will be together, “To infinity and beyond.”
In his own way, Danny has also moved on in recent years, working in carpentry and drawing in a therapeutic village, but not in a conventional fashion, by having a job and a spouse. Still, we have our Toy Story 2 routine every Friday – to infinity and beyond.
We were both upbeat as Danny kept dancing through the bonus scenes at the end of the credits. Looking back on the movie, the moment I will remember most fondly is when Buzz confides in Woody that he is going to ask Jessie to marry him, and adds, “I’d like you to be my best man.”
Danny has never been to a wedding where a “best man” was introduced as such, and I can’t imagine where he would have ever heard the term, but apparently, he liked the sound of it. Turning to me, he said, “I’d like you to be my best Hannah.”
“I’d like you to be my best Danny,” I told him.