(L to R) Jessie, Buzz Lightyear, and Woody in Disney and Pixar’s ‘Toy Story 5’. Photo courtesy of Pixar. © 2026 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

Opening in theaters on June 19 is ‘Toy Story 5,’ directed by Andrew Stanton from a screenplay by Stanton and Kenna Harris, who also co-directed. The film stars Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Greta Lee, Conan O’Brien, Tony Hale, Scarlett Spears, John Ratzenberger, Wallace Shawn, and Annie Potts.

Release Date: Jun 19, 2026

Run Time: 1 hr 42 min

Budget: $150,000,000

Related Article: Moviefone’s 2026 Theatrical and Streaming Summer Movies Preview Guide

Initial Thoughts

Lilypad (voiced by Greta Lee) in Disney and Pixar’s ‘Toy Story 5’. Photo courtesy of Disney/Pixar. © 2025 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

‘The age of toys is over,’ gravely intones a disheartened doll who now lingers in a sort of backyard cemetery of abandoned playthings in ‘Toy Story 5.’ While that may or not be true – which is the central premise of the movie – the age of ‘Toy Story’ is decidedly still with us.

More than 30 years after the original made its groundbreaking debut, ‘Toy Story 5’ finds a way to keep things charming, witty, and emotional, creating just the right balance of absurdity and pathos to keep kids and adults captivated. While there is a certain perfunctory feeling about it all, and a few overly familiar plot beats to contend with, ‘Toy Story 5’ – co-directed and co-written by Andrew Stanton, who’s had a hand in the franchise as a writer from the start – is still massively entertaining, and the cautionary tale at its heart is right on point even if it seems like the battle has already been lost.

Story and Direction

(L to R) Bullseye, Jessie, and Lilypad in Disney and Pixar’s ‘Toy Story 5’. Photo courtesy of Pixar. © 2026 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

The film starts on an island in the middle of the ocean, where a cargo container filled with Buzz Lightyear toys has washed up onshore. The Buzzes come to life, all in demo mode, and decide to find their way to Star Command. Meanwhile, back in civilization, eight-year-old Bonnie (Scarlett Spears) still plays with the toys she inherited from Andy but is increasingly lonely and isolated, happy to indulge her own imagination, but with no human friends to share it with.

Jessie the cowgirl doll (Joan Cusack) now leads the other toys and is worried (from past experience) about being abandoned by another kid. So she, the Buzz we know (voiced by Tim Allen, of course, and desperate to propose to Jessie), and the rest of the gang try to figure out a way to introduce Bonnie to two children across the street. They find instead that those kids – and their parents – sit in their house, glued to their tech devices, and it isn’t long before Bonnie gets a device of her own: a frog-themed tablet named Lilypad (Greta Lee), who immediately sets about connecting Bonnie with members of her dance class online and getting her to forget about her well-loved – but seemingly now embarrassing – physical toys.

Shocked by the rapidity with which Bonnie gets sucked into the world of chat groups, clouds, texting, and gaming – and the negative aspects of it as well, like bullying – Jessie reaches out to Woody (Tom Hanks) for help. But even as Woody arrives from the forest in which we last saw him helping abandoned toys in ‘Toy Story 4,’ Bonnie and Bullseye the toy horse have been separated from the rest of the team (who get boxed up in the garage) and find themselves through a series of mishaps at the childhood home of Jessie’s original owner, where the little girl currently living there and her own abandoned toys – including some outdated tech devices – may hold the key to salvaging both the toys and Bonnie’s mental health.

(L to R) Bullseye, Jessie, Atlas, Smarty Pants, and Snappy in Disney and Pixar’s ‘Toy Story 5’. Photo courtesy of Pixar. © 2026 Disney/Pixar.  All Rights Reserved.

It should be said at the outset that ‘Toy Story 5’ looks absolutely incredible (Pixar makes a point of mentioning in the production notes that no AI was used in the making of the movie). Every single detail of the backgrounds, foregrounds, and characters pops from the screen with extraordinary life, color, and vividness, and the inclusion of several sequences in a hand-drawn style clearly inspired by the ‘Spider-Verse’ movies – meant to show us the inside of Bonnie’s imagination – helps keep the ‘Toy Story’ palette fresh.

Directing a ‘Toy Story’ for the first time, Andrew Stanton and Kenna Harris keep the energy and heart up and the story moving, although some of the jokes could use a moment or two to breath and the ending tends to go in the same frantic direction as many other animated films’ third acts. But even if the story is a bit cluttered and some of the plot beats overly recognizable from earlier entries – yes, a couple of toys get separated from the others and must be rescued, and yes, the toys face another existential crisis – the threat this time out is all too timely.

Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Tim Allen) in ‘Toy Story 5’. Disney and Pixar’s ‘Toy Story 5’ releases in theaters June 19, 2026. © 2025 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved. © 2025 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

There is something spooky about the scenes in which the toys observe whole families all glued to their devices, not interacting with each other, and there’s also a heartbreaking moment in which we clearly see the effect that even a relatively brief amount of time online is having on Bonnie. While ‘Toy Story 5’ hardly goes down a bleak rabbit hole of darkness over the human (and toy) condition, we’re left with the disquieting idea that the primary issue is far from being solved.

The main storyline, involving Jessie (taking center stage on her own for the first time), Bonnie, and the tech, is the strongest part of the film, although sadly, you might not even miss Woody and especially Bo Peep if they hit the cutting room floor. And the least interesting subplot is the one involving the Buzz Army, which seems incorporated mainly to serve as a deus ex machina in the third act. The other toys get short-changed too (Forky, so important in ‘TS4,’ is scarcely present here), although the new additions – the potty-training device Smarty Pants and his companions Atlas (a GPS toy) and Snappy (a camera) – are fun.

Cast and Performances

Smarty Pants in Disney and Pixar’s ‘Toy Story 5’. Photo courtesy of Pixar. © 2026 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

What more can be said about this cast, of whom the charter members have been playing their roles for over 30 years? As we noted above, Joan Cusack gets the most to do as Jessie, and she brings plenty of energy and emotion to the role, with Jessie struggling to deal with her past trauma and how it relates to what’s happening in the moment.

Tom Hanks and Tim Allen slip back into the parts of Woody and Buzz with ease, even if they don’t get nearly the character arc that Cusack does. Buzz does get a great joke at the expense of the ill-fated ‘Lightyear,’ however, while Woody is the butt of several gags about his bald spot and expanding paunch.

Many other returnees simply don’t get a lot of opportunity to shine in this entry (Keanu Reeves barely registers this time out as Duke Caboom), and as far as new characters go, Greta Lee brings a smooth charm with an undertone of malevolence to the role of Lilypad, while Conan O’Brien steals the show and gets the best jokes as the smart alecky yet deeply insecure ‘hygiene instructor’ (as he rebrands himself) Smarty Pants.

Final Thoughts

(L to R) Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Tim Allen) and Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) in Disney and Pixar’s ‘Toy Story 5’. Photo courtesy of Disney/Pixar. © 2025 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

To the credit of Stanton, Pixar’s fleet of animation geniuses, and the cast, ‘Toy Story 5’ has an amazing amount of heart, grace, and good humor for a franchise this far into its lifespan. But if anything, this entry feels a bit less like a major motion picture and more like a solid episode of a TV series.

Yet the idea at its core – that real, physical play with real friends and toys can stimulate our imaginations better than staring motionlessly at an endless churn of social media, web searches, chat threads, and clickbait images – feels like a no-brainer for this saga and does hit home in an emotional way. Whether ‘Toy Story 5’ and the ‘Toy Story’ franchise at large can compete with those insidious elements of modern life – while also potentially finding new ways to move itself forward – is a question for which the answer can’t easily be searched up.

‘Toy Story 5’ receives a score of 80 out of 100.

(L to R) Woody and Buzz Lightyear in Disney and Pixar’s ‘Toy Story 5’. Photo courtesy of Pixar. © 2026 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

What is the plot of ‘Toy Story 5’?

Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Jessie and the rest of the gang’s jobs are challenged when they come face-to-face with Lilypad, a brand-new tablet device that arrives with her own disruptive ideas about what is best for their kid, Bonnie.

Who is in the cast of ‘Toy Story 5’?

‘Toy Story 5’ opens in theaters on June 19th.

List of Movies in the ‘Toy Story’ Franchise:

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