Wonka (2023)
Director: Paul King
Screenwriters: Simon Farnaby, Paul King
Starring: Timothee Chalamet, Calah Lane, Keegan-Michael Key, Paterson Joseph, Olivia Colman, Matt Lucas, Matthew Baynton, Tom Davis, Hugh Grant

Willy Wonka is an enigma. In Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), the original adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1964 novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” we don’t learn much about him, other than his desire to find an heir to his candy empire, as well as the cruel delight he takes in teaching naughty children a lesson. Wonka is charming and a little unhinged, paranoid from all of the years he has spent locked away in his factory, making sure no one gets their hands on the secret to his out-of-this-world sweets. With a devilish smile and a playful yet devious twinkle in his eye, actor Gene Wilder infuses Wonka with dimension, but we never dig too deep. He’s a nut that we never quite crack, and he works as a character because of that. There’s a reason why the original novel is called “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” after all – at the end of the day, it’s Charlie’s journey. Wilder’s performance hints at the layers inside of Wonka that we don’t need to unpeel, but nevertheless know are there. Wonka, the spiritual prequel to the 1971 musical classic, helmed by Paddington director Paul King, does unpeel those layers, but what’s found underneath is a deeply disappointing origin story that lacks the magic and edge that the original (and even Tim Burton’s 2005 remake) has in spades. Touted as a fun-for-the-whole family Christmas classic in the making, Wonka simply doesn’t have enough sparkle to ever hope to achieve that distinction.

Despite its tagline, which insists we will find out how “Willy became Wonka,” Timothée Chalamet’s version of the famous candy maker and magician doesn’t actually become anything. He just kind of already is.

The film begins with Willy, bright-eyed and bursting with optimism, atop a ship mast, where he begins his “I Want” song, “Hatful of Dreams”. Willy arrives in an unnamed city, fresh off the boat, ready to share his chocolate with the world, as his mother (Sally Hawkins) always hoped he would. Willy is earnest and determined, living on nothing but a dream. But the Galeries Gourmet is not what Willy initially imagined it would be. Instead of spreading his creations, he faces opposition and sabotage from three greedy chocolate makers, including Arthur Slugworth (Paterson Joseph), who will soon become his arch-nemesis. Willy then gets tricked into indentured servitude because he cannot read and fails to read the small print on his contract with Mrs. Scrubitt, played by Olivia Colman doing her best over the top Madame Thénardier impression. Aided by Noodle (Calah Lane), a fellow indentured servant and orphan who becomes Willy’s assistant, as well as the rest of the workers, Wonka bids to outsmart the trio and earn the freedom of himself and his friends.

Timothée Chalamet might be the only saving grace in the film, contrary to early assumptions that he may have been miscast. At times he’s charming, funny and endearing, but his performance is constantly in flux and dependent on the material and direction he’s given. When his jokes don’t land, his performance falls flat, even though he is clearly committed to the bit. Thankfully, he doesn’t try to do an impression of Gene Wilder, but he also doesn’t make the character enough of his own to really stand out. This isn’t his fault; he isn’t given much to work with.

All of the obstacles Willy encounters are external. Whether it’s Mrs. Scrubitt’s dishonest business practices, the antics of the greedy chocolatiers, or Hugh Grant’s Oompa-Loompa hijinks, the plot is always happening to Willy. He is almost entirely a reactionary character, and this is a problem in a movie that is supposed to be an origin story, the story of how he became who he is. It would have been nice if he actively participated in the narrative…

Willy’s desire to share his inventions with the world just as his mother hoped is sweet and admirable, but it simply isn’t enough to drive what we see. The writers, King and Paddington 2 co-writer Simon Farnaby (who also appears in Wonka as Basil), were backed into a corner considering Willy Wonka is a recluse by the time we meet him in the original movie. Telling that story would certainly be more interesting, but not very uplifting, so the filmmakers sidestep it entirely. As a result, there doesn’t seem to be any connection between Chalamet’s Wonka and Wilder’s.

Demystifying a character that works the best when we don’t know everything about him is a non-starter (as proven in Star Wars spin-off Solo), but the filmmakers didn’t give much thought to the supporting characters either. Lane and Chalamet work well together, and their friendship is a bright spot in the movie, but most of the supporting characters are so thinly drawn they barely register as real people. As for Hugh Grant’s Lofty, an Oompa Loompa who has been stealing Willy’s candy because he was excommunicated from Oompa Land until he can get back all of the chocolate that Willy stole, he’s surprisingly in very little of the film. The motion capture is jarring and unconvincing, but at least Grant’s contempt for the role, which he has expressed in several recent interviews, doesn’t show on screen.

Wonka, like the original film adaptation, is a musical, but not a very good one. The songs, written by Neil Hannon, King, Farnaby, and Joby Talbot, are unremarkable and lack passion, which is a shame considering Hannon’s exceptional work with The Divine Comedy. The songs in Wonka, especially Willy’s “Hatful of Dreams,” pale in comparison to those written by Howard Ashman, the songwriting genius behind the iconic tunes of The Little Mermaid (1989) and Beauty and the Beast (1991). By comparison, “Hatful of Dreams” lacks interiority or reflection. Perhaps the biggest faux pas in this regard is how Willy’s desire to sell chocolates in the hopes of reconnecting with the spirit of his late mother is barely mentioned. Songs in musicals should, in theory, take place when characters are so full of emotion that words no longer feel enough. And then, they must dance when singing doesn’t feel enough. But nothing drives the songs in this movie and they don’t feel needed. They are boring and directionless. Chalamet’s voice is fine, if a little weak and thin in places, but it’s worth noting that his best performance is when he sings “Pure Imagination”, a song not originally written for this film.

Wonka also strips away any of the melancholy or dark comedy found both in the 1971 movie and Roald Dahl’s overall work. The 1971 film feels a lot like “Alice in Wonderland” in that it is a dreamlike and slightly menacing descent into a magical world, but Wonka smooths all those edges out. As a result, the movie is sickly sweet and above all, nice. Which is ironic, because while the filmmakers were busy adding uplifting lyrics to “Pure Imagination” and simplifying the orchestrations, themes, and social commentaries of the 1971 film, they also made time to make several offensive and outdated fat jokes, aimed at Keegan Michael Key’s Chief of Police, who is dressed in a ridiculous fat suit and gets fatter and fatter the more he indulges in the sweets the greedy chocolate makers use to bribe him with. Using fatness as a shorthand for gluttony and greed, and having an actor who is not fat perform fatness, is hurtful and mean-spirited. It’s hard to believe such an antiquated trope is included in a film made in 2023 – especially one made about the wonderful taste of sweet treats – and it sours the viewing experience. For all of the niceness this movie tries desperately to exude, it makes sure to keep one of the only things from the original film that actually needed updating.

If Wonka is trying to say something, it’s hard to know what that something is. The film plays with themes of oppression, poverty, and greed, but doesn’t do much with them. It would be a losing battle to assume that Western filmmaking would trust its young audience enough to sprinkle in some adult themes, but it is equally weird to mention them in passing and not engage with them. Believing in your dreams and sharing those dreams with others should feel like magic, but the film doesn’t allow us to know these characters enough to genuinely care about them or their dreams.

The sets also leave something to be desired. When Wonka first unveils his factory in the original film, it’s a technicolor dream, calling to mind the reveal of the land of Oz in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. It is bright and colorful and a little surreal. Wonka feels like a step down in comparison, and the filmmakers’ decision to set a good chunk of the film in the Galeries Gourtmet makes the world of Wonka feel like it’s just floating in space surrounded by nothing. It is small and claustrophobic.

Prequels bait us with the promise that we will get to see some of our most beloved characters become the people we love and remember from our childhoods. In Wonka, Willy may be younger and brighter and less mad than he will soon become, but if you are counting on the film to show you how that happens, you will be very disappointed. Instead, Wonka is a barely passable movie musical that is so sugary it ends up choking on its own sweetness.

Score: 12/24

Recommended for you: ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’ (1971) Earned a Spot in Joseph Wade’s 10 Best Films of All Time

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)
Directors: Michael Jelenic, Aaron Horvath
Screenwriters: Matt Fogel, Shuntaro Furukawa
Starring: Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen

It has been thirty years since Mario made his last big-screen appearance in the Bob Hoskins-fronted live-action masterpiece (if you ask the right people…) of videogame cinema. Given the popularity of the ‘Super Mario Bros.’ video game franchise, it’s incredible to think that it has taken so long to get another, and perhaps a testament to how bad of a flop the original was. Now that sufficient time has passed, it’s all a distant memory to everyone except those of us who saw something special behind its questionable exterior. Finally, everyone’s favourite Italian family business is back with a far more faithful adaptation of the games we all know. But being more faithful doesn’t always mean that it’s much of an improvement…

The Super Mario Bros. Movie comes from Illumination this time, the studio that brought us the Despicable Me and Sing franchises, and it is at least visually in safe hands. Aesthetically, for the most part, it looks and feels like a super-high-quality albeit very extensive cut scene. Mario, Luigi, Bowser and every other character that already exists in the Nintendo universe look fantastic. Seeing as Nintendo’s most recent console release, the Nintendo Switch, is still a step behind its competitors in terms of graphic output, it’s at least fun to see this world presented in such high definition.

There is a bit of a clash of styles once we start meeting the more minor, background characters, however. They’re all designed in the typical Illumination style rather than attempting to match the style of the Nintendo characters. It’s only a slight difference, but it does have the effect of making Mario and company stick out a bit more than they should. Other than that slight complaint, it’s vibrant and colourful, and it’s more or less what a big-budget Nintendo adaptation should look like.

The narrative starts in a fairly typical place: Bowser and the Koopa Troop have attacked a region that loosely resembles the Snow Kingdom from ‘Super Mario Odyssey’. Bowser pursues a Super Star powerup that he plans on using to win Princess Peach’s affection. Meanwhile on Earth, Mario and Luigi are filming an ad for their newly set up plumbing business. At first, everything is fairly realistic if a bit heightened for the two of them, and they’re just going around doing whatever jobs they can get. After seeing reports of a significant leak on the local news, they spot their big opportunity to make a name for themselves. It all goes wrong when Mario is sucked into the Mushroom Kingdom and Luigi is sucked into a dimension that is essentially ‘Luigi’s Mansion’.

We meet Toad who accompanies Mario to meet Princess Peach so he can plead for some help in finding his newly-lost brother, and this is where it all gets somewhat strange. Mario immediately goes from being any other person on Earth to being considered a bit of an oddity by Peach on account of him being a human in a non-human world. Mario doesn’t seem all that phased by anything. This leads to the major conflict of the film as Bowser is overcome with jealous rage, seeing that Mario is in such close proximity to the Princess that he desires.

It’s a shame that during all of this, Luigi is somewhat forgotten about. We see where he is and there are sufficient visual clues for us to know that he’s entered the world from his title games, but that’s about it. Most of the time is spent with Mario and Peach trying to come up with a plan to find him while avoiding Bowser, and we only meet him again when he’s needed for the story to progress. Ultimately, it isn’t anything that we haven’t played already, even though there was a chance of bringing the two worlds together in a much more meaningful way.

It isn’t quite hitting us over the head saying “Remember this thing you liked?”, but there is a feeling that remembering the thing you liked is paramount to getting along with this particular video game adaptation.

Of course, one of the more prominent tropes of the videogame movie genre (if we can call it that) is nostalgic references. Whether it’s a direct game-to-film adaptation or an original title like Wreck-It Ralph, more modern releases in the space tend to be saturated with callbacks to things we already know. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is no different, and there are plenty of references that will make fans of the franchise say “Oh!” quite regularly. Some other pop culture references are played for jokes in its soundtrack, though these are not quite as successful. Songs that we recognise from films such as Kill Bill play on top of battle scenes that could’ve felt a little more authentic had the depths of the Mario franchise’s discography been explored more.

A key ingredient in a film like this is joy, but The Super Mario Bros. Movie is somewhat absent of that. Jack Black sounds as if he’s having a great time as Bowser – it’s even reminiscent of how Robin Williams played the Genie in Aladdin – and similar can be said for Charlie Day’s Luigi, Seth Rogen’s Donkey Kong and Keegan-Michael Key’s Toad, but our two main characters don’t seem all that interested. Chris Pratt as Mario and Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach come across as disconnected. What calls for quite an enthusiastic performance is often met with something more indifferent. Other reviews have spoken about the dialogue being stilted, but it’s not so bad that it wouldn’t have been forgivable if it were delivered with a bit more liveliness.

As a new adaptation, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is certainly more faithful and recognisable than its live-action cousin, but it’s almost to a fault. It doesn’t quite do enough to provide existing fans with anything exciting or give new fans a reason to dive any deeper into the franchise. Although it looks fantastic for the most part, and Jack Black’s performance as Bowser gives us some memorable scenes, there’s hardly anything else to this latest Hollywood foray into the Nintendo library.

Score: 9/24

Written by Rob Jones

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Pinocchio (2022)
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Screenwriters: Robert Zemeckis, Chris Weitz
Starring: Tom Hanks, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Cynthia Erivo, Luke Evans, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, Kyanne Lamaya, Keegan-Michael Key, Lorraine Bracco, Giuseppe Battiston, Sheila Atim, Jamie Demetriou, Lewin Lloyd

In 1940 Walt Disney Productions released Pinocchio, the studio’s second animated feature following the smash hit that was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was received rapturously and was held as a high watermark for vibrant, detailed and expressive animation for decades afterwards. Now Disney have remade yet another of their beloved classics in a hybrid of live-action and CG-animation to a particularly uninspiring, straight-to-Disney+ result.

Loosely based on Carlo Collodi’s “The Adventures of Pinocchio”, we follow lonely carpenter Geppetto (Tom Hanks) who has carved himself a wooden son out of grief for the child he has lost. After wishing upon a star, Pinocchio (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) comes to life and sets out on an increasingly dangerous adventure with the help of his nominated conscience Jiminy Cricket (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) in an effort to become a real boy.

So let’s start with the positives, because sadly there aren’t too many of them…

Joseph Gordon-Levitt knocks it out of the park with his Jiminy Cricket vocal delivery; all cheer and old-timey gentlemanly charm masking neuroses and self doubt. It was a cunning bit of casting to have Tom Hanks, everyone’s favourite movie dad, play one of Disney’s most lovable parents too, because nobody likes to see Hanks upset and, therefore, we all hope Geppetto’s life is going to get much happier sooner rather than later. Disney must also be praised for wisely staying faithful to Pinocchio’s iconic design from the animation, while Benjamin Evan Ainsworth voices him with vigour.

Kyanne Lamaya’s supporting role is also an interesting one. Fabiana is a dancer with a clockwork leg brace working for sideshow honcho Stromboli (Giuseppe Battiston) who throws her voice ventriloquist-style to puppeteer ballerina marionette Sabina, who becomes the only character Pinocchio can truly engage with on the same level (everyone else either exploits or coddles him). This is the only new addition to this version of the story that seems worth the time. Meanwhile, the battle in the ocean with Monstro (a more fantastical sea monster than colossal whale here) is well worth a look; arguably the only scene in the film with enough spectacle to make you wish this got a cinema release.

But, you’ve got to ask if Pinocchio really works as a character when he’s realised so pristinely in a computer. It’s almost as if he needs to be more flawed, more obviously hand-crafted, to make a tangible connection with an audience and to make sense of his journey from talking, walking inanimate object to real boy.

I know using real animals in films is discouraged these days for a number of reasons, but why’d they have to do such a terrible CG job on Figaro the cat and Cleo the goldfish? Is it just because grafting human-like faces onto otherwise zoologically accurate creatures makes it easier to imitate the moments everyone remembers from the 1940 film? The devious huckster Honest John (Keegan-Michael Key) is proof positive that Disney can never remake their take on Robin Hood in CG animation, because we now know that CG-animated anthropomorphic foxes are kind of creepy and they they can’t convey the required range of emotions with their canine faces. Key does his best to bring some life to singing “Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee”, but it’s a really uninspired sequence nevertheless.

One of the biggest crimes the Disney remakes keep committing is the compulsion to over-explain absolutely everything including, in this case, Pinocchio’s name. “Pine-oak-io”: why on earth would Geppetto name a representation of his dead son after such a terrible wood pun?

We may be bringing too much logic into a story about a magical wooden boy, but Pinocchio has only been alive for a few days and never actually made it to school, and yet he fully understands complex concepts like combustion, propeller propulsion and even death when it suits the plot. Nothing is consistent or given a second thought it would seem. 

In another moment of completely unearned Disney self-congratulation, you notice that all of Geppetto’s cuckoo clocks are shown to have Disney characters popping out of them, and it’s not a throwaway gag you’ve really got to pay attention to catch either; they give them very deliberate close-ups. All that is achieved by this is that you’re taken out of the story they are supposed to be telling.

Say what you like about the Disney remake of Beauty and the Beast from 2017, but at least they really went for it with the lavish Broadway-style musical sequences. Here, almost all the songs from the animation are cut short as if Zemeckis is scared that the kids will get bored without a new distraction every 30 seconds or so. The songs specially written for this version aren’t good or memorable, and a fun but cheesy scene where Pinocchio begins to dance a rumba with Sabina ends before it truly wins you over.

This may well be Luke Evans’ worst ever performance; all false teeth and grating accent as the Coachman, and a terrible new number that brings to mind Fagin without the rascally charm and singing in the dark. The Pleasure Island sequence that is built around the sinister Coachman’s child-napping machinations in the animation is pure nightmare fuel, but here it’s a knock-off riff on Hook but with added shadow monsters for some reason.

Robert Zemeckis’ Pinocchio has decent foundation of a beloved story and talented people involved, but is overly self-aware, unimaginative and distinctly lacking in magic no matter how lovely Cynthia Erivo’s rendition of “When You Wish Upon a Star” is. When you compare this to the animated film it so often tries to directly replicate, Matteo Garronne’s twisted Italian film from a few years ago, or even what we’ve seen so far of Guillermo del Toro’s stop-motion fable, Robert Zemeckis’ Pinocchio is just a painted block of wood.

Score: 8/24

The Bubble (2022)
Director: Judd Apatow
Screenwriter: Judd Apatow, Pam Brady
Starring: Karen Gillan, Iris Apatow, Pedro Pascal, Leslie Mann, Fred Armisen, David Duchovny, Keegan-Michael Key, Kate McKinnon, Guz Khan, Peter Serafinowicz, Maria Bamford, Vir Das, Maria Bakalova

Judd Apatow has had a long, sturdy career in film and television comedies. His work, in films like Knocked Up and television shows like Freaks & Geeks, has often exhibited a naturalistic approach to its characters, with his masterful 2009 film Funny People even pointing his honest lens on success and aging within the entertainment industry. In his latest film, Netflix’s The Bubble, he broaches the subject of the entertainment industry again, this time focusing on a group of actors filming the sixth installment of a massive studio franchise – a series of dinosaur-themed action films called Cliff Beasts – in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, and all the troubles that ensue within that challenging scenario. In a meta sense, though, there is an inherent issue with depicting the challenges of such a scenario when the challenges themselves are so uniquely unrelatable and unnecessary, especially in the context of a global pandemic. This is a flaw in the fabric of Apatow’s failed film industry satire that he is never quite able to overcome.

The satire in The Bubble feels deeply insecure, in the sense that it is far too obsessed with getting ahead of the audience’s perceptions of this film’s evident flaws instead of embracing a clear-eyed satirical perspective one way or the other. If the intention here is to make an Albert Brooks-style satire on Hollywood vanity — which is the most flattering read on this to have — then what Apatow fails to do is pin down whether we should be laughing at these characters or caring for them. When you can’t do that, especially when your film is centered around a pandemic that has negatively impacted the lives of millions, the best course of action is to adopt Gal Gadot’s tone-deaf “Imagine” video as a point of comparison and practice some self-awareness. As a film about shooting needless entertainment in the middle of a pandemic – which The Bubble is self-admittedly guilty of – any commentary on “mindless” blockbusters and how a “making movies is fun and isn’t that what it’s all about?” mindset is both harmful and wasteful, and is ultimately undone by this film’s own existence.

The only acute sense of self-awareness that The Bubble has to offer comes in the last scene where a few of the characters, referring to Cliff Beasts 6, say that the opening of their film is weak but maybe if the ending is strong it won’t matter as much. But not only is that another case of insecure satire trying to distance itself from its own criticisms towards soulless studio films, it is also barely true about The Bubble itself. This ending sting, in which we see the premiere of a documentary depicting the events that we saw, followed by the aforementioned conversation between characters, is reminiscent of the mid-credits scenes you’ll find in Adam McKay’s latest two films, Vice (2018) and Don’t Look Up (2021). One hopes that Apatow’s career is not heading in a similarly self-important and out-of-touch direction as McKay’s did, though The Bubble’s lazy and pointless ruminations on current events is not promising.

A major discrepancy between The Bubble and Apatow’s past work is the lack of naturalism here. Of course, the film’s meta-textually incorporates its extremely unnatural environment, so it is completely unintentional, but the issue remains even through the film’s attempts to focus on the private and personal moments of its characters, unfortunately. The Bubble also has the typical visual blandness of a Netflix original, with no differentiation between the film and the “disastrous” film within the film, which lends to its lack of naturalism. Worse yet, The Bubble is occupied with broad quips about how movie theaters may never exist again, so its embrace of Netflix’s uniform ugliness is yet another indication that this film has little respect for the art of film-making. 

Apatow has assembled a mostly promising ensemble of actors to portray the film’s cast and crew – including Karen Gillan, Pedro Pascal, Keegan Michael-Key, David Duchovny, as well as his mainstay cast/family members, wife Leslie Mann and daughter Iris Apatow – most of whom are portrayed as self-righteous, oblivious and phony. It’s difficult to explain the plot without breaking into several tangential descriptions of the film’s vignette-heavy structure, but it feels that in tandem with its thematic lack of focus, Apatow struggled to let the cast thrive together, instead relying on their existing talents and letting whatever happens happen. What’s odd, though, is that Apatow’s eye for talent is usually a source of his success. On top of essentially cementing the movie-star status of the likes of Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and more, his previous two directorial efforts – Trainwreck (2015) and The King of Staten Island (2020) – managed to be extremely charming, airy stories that centered on comedians who are generally controversial, if not outright disliked. Not to mention that his entire oeuvre is full of brilliantly-placed cameos and bit-parts that also function as Hollywood in-jokes (see: Lebron James in Trainwreck; Action Bronson in The King of Staten Island; the onslaught of celebrities playing themselves in Knocked Up and Funny People). All of this exhibits a unique understanding of talent that is missing in The Bubble, which still fills itself with awkward cameos and characters who show minimal understanding of current pop culture. 

Karen Gillan’s character is exemplary of the issue with The Bubble’s treatment of its characters at large. Portraying the returning star of the series, who skipped out on starring in the fifth entry only to find no success in other endeavors, she comes into this film full of insecurity and afraid that her co-stars will hate her. Being the ostensible lead, she also faces issues that encompass the intended themes and messages of the film overall, such as having a difficult time feeling connected to the film she is making as different elements are slowly removed and replaced due to budget constraints, studio interference and general on-set chaos. The returning question that lingers around her character, though, is whether the audience is meant to care for her or not. After an extremely dangerous on-set experience that left several cast and crew members injured, Gillan’s character tries to take to Iris Apatow’s character’s massive TikTok following, which Apatow doesn’t allow her to do because “no one wants to hear celebrities complain”. The problem is that this is the worst time in the film that such an argument could be brought up, because not only are unsafe working conditions in Hollywood an extremely real issue, but it’s additionally unclear whether we are meant to agree or not.

The reigning champions of The Bubble are the actors who play the non-celebrity workers on the film set, played by Samson Kayo, Maria Bakalova, Galen Hopper, and Harry Trevaldwyn. These newcomers are where you can feel Apatow’s eye for talent, and quite clearly should have been given greater focus within the film. Had the plot been centered around any one of these actors, grounding the film with folks who are being put in this unsafe position without the same benefits of fame and money, it could have erased many of the film’s uncomfortable issues, as well as injecting a fresh sense of humor into the project. The fact that Apatow literally casts his wife and daughter and yet it doesn’t feel like he can acknowledge his complicity or privilege, nor does it feel like he is interested in at least utilizing their relationship for sympathy, shows that his position as the rich director of this film is the cause for its lack of valuable perspective, which is felt all the way through its bloated 126 minute runtime.

7/24

Written by Nicholas Armstrong

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Toy Story 4 (2019)
Director: Josh Cooley
Screenwriters: Stephany Folsom, Andrew Stanton
Starring: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Annie Potts, Tony Hale

When I first heard that Pixar were making a fourth instalment in the Toy Story franchise I was both excited and nervous. I am a huge fan of Toy Story and I can distinctly remember going to see the first film at the cinema when I was five years old, a cinema that is now no longer there, so this franchise has been something I have grown up with over the course of the past 24 years.

In 1995, when the first film was released, the idea that the toys we cherished as a kid had lives of their own and loved us back was a genius ploy from the up and coming Pixar Animation Studios as it was something that every child could relate to. Cut to 2010 where again, this time as adults, we could deeply and emotionally resonate with a film about toys because of how we could relate to growing up (like Andy had to) and leaving a part of our childhood behind. This seemed to be the perfect send off; a passing of the torch (or the toys) from one now grown up kid to one who still had her whole childhood ahead of her, from one mainstay franchise to a new generation of Pixar movies under the Disney banner. And “So Long Partner”… well, it’s possibly the most perfect parting line of all time, 15 years in the making.

We’re now nine years down the line, and after such a difficult parting of ways, we get to see our beloved characters once more. Exciting, yes? Well, maybe…

The question was always going to be whether a fourth film was necessary and the answer was always going to be that it probably wasn’t, but Pixar are pretty reliable when it comes to making a good film, so there has always been a level of trust between those who grew up watching the studio’s work and their wave of new sequels and original releases.

As a child of Pixar’s fledgling adolescence, I find it difficult to not enjoy a Toy Story or a Pixar film, so it was inevitable that I’d enjoy this one – it was fun and humorous, even emotional in parts; it was all of the things you would expect from a Toy Story movie. My main concern when watching the trailer was that the new characters wouldn’t be very good, that Forky in particular would be too annoying or obnoxious for me to ever truly invest in, but I actually really enjoyed the new characters, Ducky and Bunny (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele) especially; the duo providing some excellent comedic moments. This was a nice surprise.

The issue is that my initial apprehension regarding the need for a new Toy Story was something justified by the picture itself. By no means was this a bad film, but it also wasn’t outstanding, and Toy Story had always been outstanding…

The main problem I had with Toy Story 4 was that I felt it lacked the nostalgia that the other films in the franchise provided, even though it seemed like they were trying to force nostalgia upon you by reintroducing characters such as Bo Peep and referring back to past events throughout the film. As is the case with any Toy Story movie at this stage, we don’t know whether this is the last time we’ll ever see these famous characters, so to see so little of the gang was a real shame, despite how the film’s focus on Woody on Bo Peep made for a strong central narrative arc. In this respect, even Buzz was relegated to a secondary character and seemed absent of the development he’d gone through in the previous films, his sidekicks turned adopted children (the aliens) being nowhere to be seen. The film simply focused too heavily on the new or revived characters and left me feeling robbed of time with some old favourites such as Buzz, Rex and the Potato Heads.

Even worse, Toy Story 4 left me feeling flat emotionally.

Going in to see a Toy Story film, I expect to feel a certain level of emotion towards the narrative, towards the characters, because of my own projections and etc., and this film was simply flat until the very last few lines (but there was always very little doubt I would leave the cinema without at least a few tears). In general, I was left wanting more on an emotional level, and that’s coming from a fan of the franchise; what could a casual filmgoer possibly connect to?

Well, as always, the animation was stunning.

The textures that the teams of animators at Pixar HQ are now able to create are phenomenal, right down to the tiniest scratches on Buzz’s armour after years of being played with to the smallest frays and threads coming off Bo Peeps’ worn clothes. The attention to detail is like the work of no other animation studio and illustrates exactly why Pixar more often than not come out on top with critics, audiences and awards shows alike. In growing up with this studio, there’s a sense of pride in seeing how far the animation has come since their debut feature in 1995, their achievements in a field they innovated being simply outstanding.

The plot to Toy Story 4 is a familiar story; a typical road trip movie. After Bonnie (the child) creates Forky to get her through her first day at school, Woody will do anything to make sure Forky stays by her side even though Forky believes he is not a toy and is meant solely for the trash. This essentially leaves Woody and Forky on the road to find their way back to the rest of the gang and Bonnie, which is when they stumble across an antique shop and Woody is reunited with Bo Peep (who has been living a very different life since the last time we encountered her). While the story did not necessarily offer anything new, it also seemed to come naturally, which only worked in the film’s favour. Where Toy Story 3 was the end of Andy’s story, Toy Story 4 felt like the conclusion to the Toys’ story; as Andy grew up and had to find a new place in the world, Woody and the rest of the Toys now had to do the same. One thing the plot does do very well is show the true goodness of Woody’s character and rounds his story arc off nicely. Although the film may have missed the mark on certain points, its heart seemed to be in the right place and the message it was trying to convey came across clearly; the last line of the film providing a sense of satisfaction that the rest of the picture lacked.

To reiterate, Toy Story 4 is by no means a bad film. It was perfectly fine and very enjoyable, but it didn’t live up to expectations. Adults who have grown up with the franchise may be a little disappointed, but perhaps Toy Story is no longer for us… perhaps Toy Story 3 was as much about us moving on from it, as it was about Andy moving on from the toys? I have a feeling that, regardless of the answer to that question, kids will love this instalment all the same.

16/24