Toy Story 4 (2019)

(Disney+ Streaming, December 2020) No, we did not need a Toy Story 4. The third one was already a gamble, but it also ended in such a definitive way that any attempt to follow it up would be doomed to disappointment. To be clear, Toy Story 4 is not a failure: too much effort has gone into it from seasoned professionals that it still benefits from Pixar’s usual high polish, incredible animation and storytelling prowess. But even those advantages can’t quite conceal the hollowness at the film’s reason for existing. After the high note of the third film, this one feels like another episode without a point – a detour in a bric-a-brac that makes the series’ internal mythology even more confounding, with scant justification for the hijinks along the way. The “forky” character is a thicket of existential philosophy conundrums by itself that the film isn’t interested in exploring all that deeply, and the ending is worth a shrug more than anything else. The series is close to having nothing else left to say at a higher narrative level, so it’s a relief to find that, on a beat-by-beat level, Toy Story 4 is much better: there are a few fun set-pieces, one pleasantly loopy new character (Keanu Reeves voicing a Canadian stuntman toy), decent dialogue and a continuation of characters introduced in previous instalments. But in the end, the hollowness returns as soon as the end credits are done: this wasn’t much of an essential instalment, and now that we’re apparently going forward with this, what else is going to be added to the series, perhaps forever? (I wouldn’t be opposed to a remaster of the original, though.) I’m sure Pixar will find a way, no matter whether we want it or not.