BEFORE: I snuck out to the movies in late July, right between "Very Bad Things" and "The Box", to catch this one before it left theaters - it's crucial to my September linking plans, and I didn't want to miss it. But I waited until after "The Lion King" opened, and went on a Monday night, so that attendance would be minimal, and I wouldn't have to sit next to a bunch of kids and listen to them talking all through the movie. Plus it might not look as funny, me going out to see a kids' movie, if there just weren't that many people in the theater - when I bought the ticket and selected my seat, it looked like I'd practically have the place to myself. Just the way I wanted it.
Tom Hanks carries over from "The Circle", this one's a no-brainer. CORRECTION: Now Carl Weathers carries over from "Creed II", I decided to switch it up. No-brainers are for wusses.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Toy Story 3" (Movie #1,066)
THE PLOT: When a new toy called "Forky" joins Woody and the gang, a road trip alongside old and new friends reveals how big the world can be for a toy.
AFTER: Now here's a movie I can really overthink, to the point of annoyance - I apologize in advance. In returning to this franchise for the first time in 19 years, there was obviously the need for new characters, new locations and new adventures. The original owner of the toys-that-come-to-life has aged out of the program, so what do toys do when they're no longer played with by their original owner, and have already avoided the incinerator, the collector's market, and several garage sales? Here most of them get donated by Andy to a little girl, Bonnie, with a vivid imagination. But she's got different priorities than Andy when it comes to playtime, so some of Andy's favorite toys become less played with, and other background toys suddenly become toy superstars. (There's some kind of metaphor in there, maybe for adults who get a new boss at work?)
She also has the ability to create her own toys, as many kids do, most notably a plastic dining tool at school that she glues arms, feet and googly eyes to. Forky should be called "Sporky", really - but this kid's not old enough to appreciate portmanteau words, I guess. He's the toy that wants to be trash, and keeps jumping in the wastebasket, where he feels he belongs. But I guess it's meant to represent that "God doesn't make trash", and Bonnie is sort of like his God. But now I'm questioning this "existential utensil", like is it appropriate in an animated movie for children to have a character that keeps trying to commit suicide because he thinks that he's worthless? It's probably not a good message to send out to the kids.
But while tracking down the lost Forky on a road trip set between Kindergarten orientation and the first day of school (there's a NITPICK POINT in there somewhere...like why would a parent say, "Hey, school starts in three days, let's drive somewhere far away!), Woody spots Bo Peep's lamp in an antique shop, conveniently located next to a traveling carnival, and that really sets things in motion. Woody gets his own little adventure re-uniting with Bo Peep and trying to get Forky back, while Buzz Lightyear finds himself in the carnival and enlists the help of Ducky and Bunny. The other returning characters, unfortunately, aren't given a lot to do here, except to stay in the RV and wait for the headlining toy characters to return. Bo-RING!
There are other obvious contrivances - the family never planned to spend the whole day at the carnival, but this becomes a must due to a flat tire that takes Bonnie's father about 6 or 7 hours to change. (See, THIS is why people don't go on vacation a few days before school starts..) Who the hell changes their own tire in this day and age? Couldn't he just call AAA or get a mechanic to do it? I say this largely because I don't own a car, and I'm not sure that I'd know how to properly change a tire on a vehicle - I'm not that mechanically inclined, OK? For me this is NITPICK POINT #2 - if I thought it was going to take me 6 hours to change a tire, I'd probably get someone else to do it - but the plot dictates that the family can't leave the RV park until the toys return, and so the toys (and the screenwriters) have to keep finding ways to delay their departure.
I also don't have kids - but if I did have a daughter, and she wouldn't go to school without a toy or she wouldn't want to leave an RV park without her toy fork, she and I would have a big problem. That would be what you call a "teachable moment", like if you didn't want to lose your fork, you should have kept better track of it. We're just not turning this car around and going back to the last town just because you misplaced a fork. You wonder why kids are so soft these days? THIS is why, they've been coddled by parents who are too afraid to teach them any tough lessons, or let them be negatively affected in any way. They NEED to go through tough times, they need to experience loss, even in small degrees, or they won't be able to handle bigger losses when they become adults.
The road trip represents all-new, all-weird territory for the franchise, and leads to a number of problematic questions. What makes a toy come to life, is it the energy they get from a child's love? This can't be completely correct, because there are "lost toys" and toys that don't have kids, and they still move around and talk just fine. Are those toys powered by residual kid energy, and if so, when does it run out? Gabby Gabby (this world's version of "Chatty Cathy") has been around for decades in the antique store without any kid believing in her, and she still seems to be doing fine.
Speaking of her, umm, speaking, there seem to be two kinds of talking in this toy-based world - the toys talk to each other, only they're not allowed to talk to humans, but some toys, like Gabby and Woody and Buzz, also have recorded "voice-boxes" inside of them, when you pull the string they say any of a few recorded phrases. Buzz Lightyear sort of re-discovers his voice-box in this film - did he somehow forget about it? - when Woody's talking about his own "inner voice", meaning his conscience. It's a funny bit when Buzz confuses the two things, and mistakes his recorded messages for his deeper, advising thoughts.
But Gabby's voice-box is broken, so it's harder for kids to play with her (but even then, she's still a DOLL, so maybe that's not the real problem) yet she talks to the other toys just fine - I guess if she couldn't talk at all, then it would be hard to move the plot forward, since she's essentially cast as the villain here. She's got a number of ventriloquist dummies that work for her like gang members in the antique shop, but they DON'T talk at all - why is that? The other toys without voice-boxes can talk to each other when nobody is looking - but the dummies stay silent. Is that because they're designed to speak only when a ventriloquist is moving their mouths, or is it just to make them creepier overall? If it's the latter, then mission accomplished. Or is something else at work here, because a ventriloquist's dummy isn't really a TOY, it's a tool. Or am I drawing too fine of a technical distinction?
The writers missed a real opportunity with Gabby Gabby - here's a character that isn't whole or complete, she's broken in a way, and she not only lets that define her, but it corrupts her into an uncaring villain. She's willing to TAKE Woody's voice-box if it gets her ahead in the world. What does this say to kids out there who might have a disability or some kind of health problem - that it's OK to be self-centered and mad at the world, instead of learning to cope with the situation or find a way around it? This is another very dubious message to send out to children in the audience - like what if a kid needed a liver transplant or something, would it somehow be OK to take another kid's liver against his or her will? I'm exaggerating to make a point, of course, but I think there were better ways to approach this character to create a better villain for this film.
What are the rules in this world, where toys are alive yet can't reveal to humans that they are alive? For that matter, why can't they? This shares some DNA with films like "The Secret Life of Pets", where all the pets can communicate with each other, but they can't (or don't) communicate with humans. I think the pets can't, they somehow speak "pet language" that people can't understand, but somehow the cats can talk to the dogs, and they both can talk to birds and rabbit, which seems relatively weird, I mean cats "meow" and dogs bark, those should be different languages, right? But toys have rules, they can only walk around and talk when humans can't see or hear them - what would be the harm in people knowing that these toys can move around? Would people think they were crazy, would their heads explode?
And if the toys did talk to humans, would they be punished somehow by the toy police? Or would their deity strike them down for revealing the truth about talking toys to people? After four movies now where the toys have to follow these arcane rules, the novelty is really wearing off. Eventually (maybe in "Toy Story 5") they're going to have to figure out a way for the toys to talk to SOME human, even if that person ends up in an asylum, because all this sneaking around and "don't let them see us" and "Keep your voice down!" is really constraining the story in parts.
There are still more new characters - the stuffed duck and bunny at the carnival, the Canadian motorcycle stuntman, and several new (new to the franchise, but they're old, forgotten toys) characters named after the famous comedians who provide their voices. And Bo Peep is found again, I think we haven't seen her since "Toy Story 2", as the opening scene reveals why she was given away - she's not even technically a toy, since she was a porcelain figure on a lamp that a little girl kept on all night when she was afraid of the dark. But when the kid aged out of that fear, there was no more need for the lamp, so she was given away, and became a "lost toy", umm, lamp part. Again, this is a weird world, right?
Then, finally, we've got the Woody storyline - I wonder about whether this was pitched to appeal to older viewers, some people out there who have to make tough choices between career and family - like if you're offered your dream job but have to move across the country to accept it, or if you find that you're working so hard that you're not spending enough time with your significant other, and it's affecting the relationship. Woody has to make a similar choice between his "job" - being Bonnie's toy - and his recently re-found love interest, Bo Peep. (Why they didn't market this as a classic "toy meets girl, toy loses girl, toy gets girl back story", I don't quite understand.) It seems an odd choice for the character to make, the decision to become a "lost toy", which sounds very negative, but once he gets a taste for the freewheeling lifestyle that Bo Peep found, maybe he decided he needed a break. Some adults can perhaps understand this, if they find themselves burnt out from a high-pressure job, and they make a similar decision to drop out and go live on an island or by a beach and spend whatever time they have left a little poorer, but a lot more relaxed. Who's to say in the end, everyone has to decide if it's time for a course correction.
I've got more animated films to watch before this year is over - six more are planned. And what's odd is that "Toy Story 4" links to several of them, but whenever I tried to make one big themed chain out of them, it just didn't work. The problem seemed to be that "Toy Story 4" would link to one this one here or that one there, but then there would be no possible outro - so the only way I could solve that little puzzle was to take "Toy Story 4" away from most of the others, which will now function as a mini-chain in October to help link my horror films - and coincidentally, two of the animated features are sort of horror-related - "Coco" and "Hotel Transylvania 3". So this year, the October chain will be mostly horror, and partly non-horror animation. And then similarly, I'm splitting off "Ralph Breaks the Internet" to screen in December, to function as another crucial link.
Also starring the voices of Tom Hanks (last seen in "Filmworker"), Tim Allen (last heard in "Toy Story 3"), Annie Potts (last seen in "It Could Happen to You"), Tony Hale (last seen in "Yoga Hosers"), Keegan-Michael Key (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Jordan Peele (last heard in "Get Out"), Madeleine McGraw (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp"), Christina Hendricks (last seen in "Fist Fight"), Keanu Reeves (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 2"), Ally Maki, Jay Hernandez (last seen in "Bright"), Lori Alan, Joan Cusack (last seen in "Snatched"), Wallace Shawn (last seen in "Capitalism: A Love Story"), John Ratzenberger (last heard in "Incredibles 2"), Blake Clark (last seen in "The Ridiculous 6"), Estelle Harris (last seen in "CBGB"), John Morris (also last heard in "Toy Story 3"), Jeff Pidgeon (ditto), Bonnie Hunt (last heard in "Zootopia"), Kristen Schaal (last seen in "Butter"), Timothy Dalton (last seen in "The Rocketeer"), Jeff Garlin (last seen in "Robocop 3"), Emily Davis, Laurie Metcalf (last seen in "Desperately Seeking Susan"), June Squibb (last seen in "Table 19"), Patricia Arquette (last seen in "A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III"), Bill Hader (last seen in "Love, Gilda"), Alan Oppenheimer, Lila Sage Bromley, Juliana Hansen, with archive sound of Don Rickles (last seen in "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work") and cameos from Mel Brooks (last seen in "Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic"), Carol Burnett (last seen in "The Four Seasons"), Betty White (last seen in "If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast"), Carl Reiner (last seen in "The Last Laugh"), Flea (last seen in "Baby Driver"), Melissa Villasenor, Rickey Henderson.
RATING: 7 out of 10 carnival games
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