‘Toy Story 5’
Directed by Andrew Stanton (PG)
★★★
Toy Story 5 arrives this week as further proof that “there’s no animated franchise that’s ever plumbed the human condition so deftly,” said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. As “unnecessary and charming” as 2019’s Toy Story 4, it’s “a cute and funny sequel” that once again seamlessly weaves big ideas about the terrors of loss, abandonment, and mortality with suspenseful action, a heart-tugging message, and plenty of “good-natured goofiness.” The best thing about seeing the once-perfect Toy Story catalog expand again is that Jessie, the cowgirl doll voiced by Joan Cusack, “finally gets to take center stage,” said David Fear in Rolling Stone.
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Jessie is the favorite toy of 8-year-old Bonnie, so when the shy grade-schooler is given a digital tablet and loses interest in her old playthings, it’s Jessie who leads the fight to expose the pitfalls of socializing online. But while screen technology fully deserves its villainous role, “Toy Story 5 is a screed in search of a story,” and all of the movie’s secondary plotlines—about Buzz Lightyear, Sheriff Woody, and one of Bonnie’s tween neighbors—“somehow feel like filler.” Sadly, “this is what happens when you beat a franchise to death.” The movie, to be sure, “doesn’t take many risks,” said Robert Daniels in RogerEbert.com. Jessie eventually makes peace with technology, suggesting we all simply find a balance between the online world’s attractions and organic living. “It’s your prototypically beautifully rendered movie tackling a heady subject in the safest possible manner”—which isn’t bad for a fifth outing.
‘The Death of Robin Hood’
Directed by Michael Sarnoski (R)
★★
The title character played by Hugh Jackman in this revisionist drama is “not the Robin Hood of green tights and swashbuckling adventure,” said Tim Grierson in Screen Daily. Disappointingly, he comes across instead in this latest drama from the acclaimed director of 2021’s Pig as “just another flinty antihero manfully attempting to make amends for his bad acts.” Though a gray-bearded Jackman endows the character with “sufficient sorrow” and “a believable ferocity,” the outlaw’s eleventh-hour pursuit of redemption leads to “earnestly executed but fairly predictable twists and turns.”
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The movie, to be fair, “holds our attention for the sheer severity of its reinvention,” said Guy Lodge in Variety. This Robin Hood, despite the lore that’s already grown around him, robbed and killed to enrich only himself, and after a bloody opening skirmish he’d hoped would end his life, he awakens in a priory where he’s tended to by an abbess played by Jodie Comer. As he befriends an orphaned girl and a leper, the film proves both “a production of unimpeachable intelligence” and “a slow, steady downer” for most of its run. “For an often ponderously uneventful film, the ending also feels strangely rushed,” said Benjamin Lee in The Guardian. “There’s really impressive craft here, though,” as director Michael Sarnoski makes the most of natural sounds and settings to transport us to 13th-century England. While his unconventional latest effort winds up “stuck somewhere between epic and chamber piece,” he remains a filmmaker to watch. “Greatness will one day surely come.”