Toy Story 4
At their cores, each Toy Story film is about the adventures of a gaggle of charming kids’ playthings, but as the franchise has carried on, the ideas underpinning those hijinks have gotten richer and darker: By Toy Story 3, the first Toy Story's simple message of tolerance became, in part, an exploration of accepting death. (Who could forget that harrowing scene of Woody, Buzz, and the gang holding hands as they stared down the fiery maw of an incinerator?) This entertaining fourth installment eases up a bit, with a much simpler theme of not being afraid to grow up. Along the way, Toy Story 4 visits some of the strangest corners of the Pixar universe, including an antique store dominated by a sinister doll (voiced by Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks) and her immensely creepy ventriloquist dummy lackies, and an underground network of lost toys that includes a preening French Canadian Evel Knievel knockoff (Keanu Reeves).
by Robert Ham