Toy Story 5: I did not cry this time, but as a dad, this film spoke to me like no other

I cried for the third one, like everyone else, otherwise you have no heart. I did not like the fourth, even though I cried for Woody's departure. And then life did its work: now I am a father. Twice. What an idea, haha. So when I sat down in front of Toy Story 5, I did not yet know that it was no longer the 90s kid who was going to watch this film, but the father I have become. And this time, it spoke to me like no other.

A fifth entry that aims straight at the heart of our era

Toy Story 5 was released on 19 June 2026, directed by Andrew Stanton and co-directed by Kenna Harris. Woody, Buzz, Jessie and the whole gang see their role upended by the arrival of Lilypad, a brand-new tablet that lands in Bonnie's life with her own, very firm ideas about what is best for their kid. On paper, the pitch looks like yet another toy adventure. In reality, Pixar delivers a frontal reflection on our era: what becomes of play when nobody plays with toys anymore? What does screen time do to our children?

That is where the film caught me, as a father. My children do not have a tablet yet, and that is not about to happen. Seeing a mainstream animated blockbuster pose that question without demagoguery, with Pixar's tenderness and intelligence, moved me more than I expected. You feel that Stanton and his team are not preaching: they observe, they worry gently, and they leave us with our own questions as parents.

The Buzz Lightyear side story, that little joy

Before talking about the film's heart, we have to do justice to its madness. There is a little matter of fifty commemorative Buzz Lightyear figures stuck in toy mode, who will create joyful chaos for everyone. This side story with the Buzz Lightyears is really fun. It is Pixar at its comic best: an absurd idea, pushed all the way, that makes kids laugh on the first level and parents on the second. It lightens the subject, it paces the film, and it reminds you that Toy Story never forgot to be entertainment before being a lesson.

The main story, or the fear of watching imagination die

But it is the main story that gripped my throat. It is touching, and you feel sad for these two little girls, Bonnie and the one who got Jessie, who are not made for a digital world, precisely because they overflow with imagination. And there, the film puts its finger on something I feel deeply: playing Candy Crush has never expressed the slightest imagination. On the contrary, it kills it. A screen occupies you, it invents nothing for you. A toy, on the other hand, does nothing on its own: it is the child who gives it a voice, a story, a life.

When I see my 5-year-old son inventing adventures with his toys, exactly like me at his age, I am overjoyed, and I hope with all my heart that it lasts. Toy Story 5 puts images on that quiet fear of every parent of my generation: that of watching our kids trade the infinite worlds they invent for the endless scroll of a screen. The film does not dumbly demonise technology, but it defends play, the real kind, the one that is born of nothing and fills a whole bedroom.

I was there, Gandalf, 3,000 years ago

And then there is the nostalgia, the kind that catches up with you when the music starts. I was there, Gandalf, 3,000 years ago, in my little neighbourhood cinema, when Toy Story 1 came out. I belong to that generation that knew Disney at the cinema, starting with The Lion King, the very first one, which I was surely too young to be allowed to see in theatres. But those were the 90s: we did not even have seatbelts, parents smoked in the car, and we ate sugar-loaded junk in the back seat.

Today, our children have three-point seatbelts with Isofix seats, no snacking in the back, and no one sane smokes in front of their kids. Do not smoke in front of your children, please, haha. The world has changed, for the better on many points, and Toy Story has grown up with us. This fifth entry speaks to that too: to the children who saw the first one and became parents in turn. Pixar always knows how to speak to us, to our generation, the one that put away its toys without ever truly forgetting them.

Verdict: maybe one of the best, even without the tears

The story is good, the film is magnificent, and it is even surely one of the best Toy Story films, even if this one did not make me cry, haha. And you know what? That is not a flaw. Where the third tore our hearts out over the end of childhood, the fifth does something rarer: it addresses the parent we have become, it asks the right questions about our kids and screens, and it defends imagination without ever talking down to us.

I walked into the theatre as a nostalgic. I walked out as a father a little more determined to let my children invent their own adventures for as long as possible. If a cartoon about toys can do that, then it has understood everything. Thank you Pixar, once again.

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Personal chronicle. Toy Story 5, directed by Andrew Stanton, in theatres since 19 June 2026.