‘Toy Story 5’ review: Jessie, Woody and Buzz take on big tech in joyful sequel

Finally, Jessie gets her own movie.

After decades of being a supporting player, the plucky cowgirl rag doll voiced by Joan Cusack is the main character of “Toy Story 5.” She is hellbent on helping 8-year-old Bonnie find real friends after the lonely girl is bullied in an online chat room in this rootin’ tootin’ animated adventure from Disney’s Pixar.

Of course, Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), Bo Peep (Annie Potts), Combat Carl (Ernie Hudson) and the rest of the gang are back, too — because it wouldn’t be a “Toy Story” movie without them. They are joined by newcomers Smarty Pants (Conan O’Brien), a toilet-training tech toy, and Pizza with Sunglasses (Bad Bunny).

But it’s a girl-power movie as Bonnie (Scarlett Spears) bonds with her new tablet, Lilypad (Greta Lee), and Jessie ventures outside the suburbs to a familiar farmhouse where the cowgirl got her start decades earlier to search for help.

Inevitably, the “Toy Story” franchise would have to address tech and its effect on children even though, charmingly, all the toys seem to be from the Eisenhower era. The first “Toy Story” came out in 1995, but cowboy Woody and space ranger Buzz are much like the heroes of 1950s Saturday matinees.

Lilypad, however, is a game-changer for the series. For the first time, children can explore the world without leaving their rooms. Bonnie, who inherited the toys from Andy, the child of the first three films who eventually went off to college, suddenly doesn’t need toys once she has Lilypad. Toys are, in fact, not cool at all, as Bonnie finds out when she goes to a sleepover where all her peers spend hours looking at their screens.

This is the first post-pandemic “Toy Story,” following the fourth installation, which came out in 2019. How children connect with other children and how parents help their kids navigate these choppy digital waters have changed. Indeed, the whole concept of “play” has evolved.

In such a world, how do traditional toys remain relevant?

Tiburon resident Andrew Stanton, one of the great directors in Pixar history (2003’s “Finding Nemo,” 2008’s “WALL-E”), finally helms a “Toy Story” movie after co-writing all of them. But “Toy Story 5,” while never less than joyful, doesn’t achieve greatness.

There was an extra emotional level that made “Toy Story 3” — a masterpiece that looked death in the eye — the series’ high-water mark. “Toy Story 5” is breezy and predictable, with some energizing chases and a few heart-tugging scenes. But even as a middling “Toy Story” movie, it remains among the top animated films of the genre.

The movie also serves as a welcome back for Allen, who should have voiced Buzz in “Lightyear” (2022) but was passed over for Chris Evans. (The spinoff was considered a box office flop, losing an estimated $106 million for the Emeryville animation studio.)

As if Pixar is apologizing for the mistake, “Toy Story 5” is filled with Buzz Lightyears — the movie opens with about a hundred of them — and Buzz and Jessie develop an undeniable chemistry.

But it is Jessie’s show, and Cusack, the two-time Academy Award nominee, makes the most of it. There’s one scene under a tree atop a hill that harks back to her origins in “Toy Story 2”  and is as moving as any scene in the franchise.

By the time Taylor Swift’s “I Knew It, I Knew You” plays over the end credits, you know Bonnie is in good hands.