I just got back from seeing Toy Story 5. It was getting pretty good reviews and I like the other four so I was predisposed to liking this. In fact, for a few movies in the TS series now I’ve been hoping they’d do a “toys vs tech toys” plot. We finally got that so I was pumped for this.

But holy cow I was not expecting how awesome this was going to be. I absolutely loved this film. I laughed out loud easily a dozen times it had some huge emotional stuff for fans of the series. I won’t say what exactly, but I did tear up a bit at a few parts. It was outstandingly good – I will go so far to say it was the best Toy Story film since the original. One interesting take on this is that Jesse is the lead here. It’s not Woody. He’s in it a bunch, and he has some good moments, but isn’t the lead character.

As I mentioned, characters from the other films are here. Like the core toys of course, but we got other ones added along the line (like Keanu Reeves’ character from TS4 makes an appearance here).

My favorite NEW character though is Smarty Pants. He’s voiced by Conan O’Brien. This movie does something different with “playtime”. When the toys are played with it goes into this mostly 2D Pastel design. In this segment, when Smarty Pants is played with, he’s drawn with pointy red hair – to match Conan O’Brien’s real hair. That’s one of the things I laughed at.

You do kind of need to see the prior TS films first before seeing 5. I won’t ruin plot points but if you didn’t see TS4 and how it ended, and went right from say 2 to 5, you’d go “How did Woody get there”?

I’ve seen all five of them obviously, and in my opinion, this is the best one since the original. I cannot stress how much I loved this. Go see it. It’s amazingly good.

A few fun things that ruin nothing:

1. They finally recast Mr. Potato Head. Don Rickles died after agreeing to do Toy Story 4, but he didn’t record any voices. They pieced together his dialogue for TS4 from prior recordings, but this time they couldn’t really do that. According to IMDB, he’s now voiced by Jeff Bergman who has done a lot of the old Looney Tunes characters in modern times.
2. The Pizza Planet truck was easily spotted. Granted it was in one of the trailers, so I’d already seen it, but still. Saw it on night one. ha. Didn’t spot the Luxo ball, however. Or a cat from the next film (Gatto).  I’ve embedded the final trailer for TS5 on this page.  The Pizza Planet truck appears at 1:33 in the trailer.
3. There was a Toy Story short almost 15 years ago called “Partysaurus Rex” which is easily my favorite TS short. Anyway, in that one there’s a character called “Captain Suds” – he’s a boat. Anyway, that exact boat is in this film in what looks like a discarded toy area. I geeked out way too much at that. Unclear if it’s the same voice actor.
4. In the trailer, there’s a sequence of Buzz Lightyears that come out of the water and storm a beach. I won’t say what happens there, but this group appears in many scenes in the movie, and they were a major highlight of the overall film for me.
5. There is a mid credit scene which pays off something from earlier in the film. There is no post credit scene though, although there’s some stuff in the credits themselves at the end. Some places are reporting there’s two – a mid and post credit scene. There is not. Just the mid credit scene. When that’s done, you can go. Won’t miss anything important.