Toy Story 5 delivers a timely and visually stunning narrative that gently but firmly advocates for protecting children’s imagination from the pervasive influence of digital devices, notes Deepa Gahlot.
Key Points
- Toy Story 5 addresses how children have outgrown traditional toys, making a case for protecting their imagination from digital devices.
- The film highlights the loneliness experienced by children over-dependent on gadgets, contrasting it with the joys of playing with real toys.
- Visually stunning, the movie serves as a ‘gentle alarm’ about the toxicity of screens and the need to safeguard childhood.
In the three odd decades since Toy Story came out in 1995, society has changed, the parameters of entertainment have changed, and children have cellphones attached to their fingers.
At a time when AI is shaking things up, Toy Story 5 acknowledges the fact that children have outgrown traditional playthings. But it also makes a case for saving the imagination of kids from being colonised by electronic devices.
The Evolution of Play
Toy Story was the first entirely computer animated feature film and the first to be produced by Pixar Animation Studios.
It had the simple plot about toys coming to life, and an old-fashioned cowboy doll named Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) worried that a space cadet action figure, Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) is replacing him as the favourite toy of their owner, Andy. The central idea of toys loyal to their kids fighting new technology and possible redundancy runs through the franchise.
In Toy Story 5, the playthings relegated to shelves and storage cartons face their toughest challenge yet — hand held digital devices.
A New Digital Threat
Directed by veteran Andrew Stanton with co-director Kenna Harris, the fifth installment understands that the over dependence on gadgets has created a generation of lonely kids, who have forgotten the joys of playing with real toys.
The ragdoll, Jessie (voiced by Joan Cusack), is now the ‘sheriff’, or leader, of the toys in eight-year-old Bonnie’s (Scarlett Spears) basket. Kept away from digital screens by her parents, Bonnie still plays with her collection of toys. But no other kid does, so she is friendless. Her classmates are absorbed in a digital ecosystem known as ‘The Pond’.
Sensing their daughter’s isolation, Bonnie’s well-meaning parents buy her a Lilypad (Greta Lee), a chatty, high-tech, frog-shaped, smart tablet, that would help her connect to localised networks and group chats.
But Jessie, hurt at being sidelined by Bonnie, also understands that the kid needs real friends. In the process of helping her, Jessie and her loyal horse Bullseye are separated from their group and accidentally land at the farm that used to belong to her original owner Emily. Living there now is Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris), a high-energy nine-year-old animal enthusiast, whose life is not dictated by online attractions.
Nostalgia and a Gentle Warning
Dialing up the nostalgia that grown ups must undoubtedly feel, the film digs out from forgotten junk drawers, outdated gizmos like Smarty Pants, a potty-training gadget (Conan O’Brien), an old camera and a toy GPS device.
Woody and Bo Peep return to help Jessie deal with the Lilypad crisis. There is also a crazy subplot involving a shipwrecked bunch of factory-reset Buzz Lightyears, in search of their ‘commander’.
Visually, the film is an absolute marvel.
The colours, textures and expressions of the toys and humans are created with a vivid imagination. Toy Story 5 does not decry the dehumanisation of kids sucked into modern technology, but makes a strong case for finding ways of letting kids be kids and not tech-absorbed zombies.
There is no going back to the idyllic world of simple toys, but children have also to be protected against the toxicity produced by screens.
The world is just walking up to it, and some countries are trying to control or ban social media for minors, but that genie may have escaped the bottle. Toy Story 5 sounds a gentle alarm and hopes enough children and families hear it.
