5.Toy Story 4 (2019)

To put it simply, there are a lot of poor and lazy kids’ movies made every year. Movies that are just colors and lack any depth to help the development of a child. Toy Story 4 is not that and it deserves to be celebrated for that reason. Toy Story, on its worst day, is better than 90% of content made for children. Whether or not audiences really needed another film in this franchise is up for debate, especially since the third instalment is a perfect ending. 

Toy Story 4 is far from perfect, but the voice cast from both new and returning players is great. Toy Story 4 works as a thoughtful exploration of how we find purpose when life starts to change, which is a thematic idea that is probably relevant for most of the fans who grew up with this franchise and are not in their adult life. If you haven’t seen Toy Story 4 in a while, it is worth the rewatch and reexamination. 

4.Toy Story 5 (2026)

The latest installment in the Toy Story franchise follows the gang of toys as they are threatened by technology replacing what children know as “play time”. Bonnie, the toy’s owner, has recently been given a tablet called “Lily Pad”, as her parents hope that this will help Bonnie fit in with all of the other children who have devices. 

All things considered, Toy Story 5 feels like a more appropriate follow-up film to the third installment than Toy Story 4 did. It was inevitable that Pixar would have to acknowledge that technology is arguably more important to the modern child than toys are. While it might seem like this film would take a completely anti-technology stance, it does not. What this installment has to say is a bit more nuanced than “throw your phone in the trash”. The film centers on Jessie and the idea of female friendship, which marks new territory for the franchise. Some of the film’s most exciting moments come in the form of imaginary play sequences, where the animation changes to something that looks a bit like watercolors. Those moments are a lot of fun and show that Toy Story can continue to experiment with the animation medium all these years later. 

That said, it is the only Toy Story film that does not feel like a finale. This just feels like another installment and while it does not work to set up a sixth film, do not be surprised in five years when Toy Story 6 is announced. 

3.Toy Story 2 (1999)

Once again, Woody has gone missing; this time, he is taken by a toy collector named Al. The gang must go on a daring rescue mission to save the cowboy. Toy Story 2 is a movie that works best when expanding the world of the toys and how exactly the life of the toys works. The toys leave Andy’s home and go out into the world, showing the audience just how interesting and weird Pixar can get with these movies. This is the film that introduces one of Pixar’s core characters, Jessie. It often feels forgotten that a character so iconic is introduced in the second film and has not been there since day one. 

While Toy Story 2 is one of the great films to come out of Pixar, it does not quite pack the emotional punch that other films in the franchise do (aside from the Jessie backstory). 

2. Toy Story (1995)

Toy Story is a perfect movie. Truthfully, that’s all that really needs to be said (but I will keep going). Toy Story is not brought up enough in the discussion for the most important films to come out of the 90s. It does not seem like it would be most people’s gut response if they were asked what the 5 or 10 best movies to come out of the decade are. This is a film that completely changed the world of animation and blockbuster storytelling forever. Maybe aside from The Matrix, is there another more influential movie from that time period? This animation style is the dominant mode for these types of movies, so many children’s movies want to have screenplays as perfect as this one and ensemble casts as memorable as this one. No notes, there is no need to elaborate any further.

1.Toy Story 3 (2010)

This movie has a certain magic to it that few other movies have. There is an argument to be made that Toy Story and Toy Story 2 have more perfect screenplays, but there is a level of emotionality brought to 3 that the others do not have. 

We follow the toys as they grapple with Andy growing up and moving on. This is one of the smartest moves the Pixar team could have made, as the audience members who grew up with the first two films will now be in the same age range as Andy. It feels like a natural evolution, especially since this is far and away the most mature film in the bunch. It is a movie that has grown with its audience and is not taking any shortcuts. It is a perfect conclusion to this original three-movie run and a franchise can rarely pull off a perfect trilogy, especially with a third movie. 

The post Ranking the Toy Story Films appeared first on Utah.Film.

I noticed something while watching “Inside Out 2” that I hadn’t quite picked up on before. We all know Pixar puts out films that are enjoyable for parents as well as their presumed adolescent target audience, and the new sequel to Pete Docter’s 2015 original maintains that standard. But like that film, “Inside Out 2” also captures something very real that even the best Pixar films can’t always manage.

The stakes are small, but they feel enormous.

We should all know the basic concept by now. The “Inside Out” films take place inside the mind of a young girl named Riley (voiced by Kensington Tallman). The main characters are her dominant emotions, personified: joy, sadness, anger, etc. These characters go on dramatic adventures, but on the outside, Riley is encountering very relatable, down-to-earth experiences. In the first movie, she was moving cross-country and starting in a brand-new school. In “Inside Out 2,” she’s attending a hockey camp. The fate of the world is not at stake, and Riley is no “chosen one” prophesied to bring balance to the Force or to fight off the Dark Lord Voldemort.

And yet, in her mind, the fate of ‘her’ world is at stake.

Aside from the cleverness of the basic concept, this is one of the things I like best about the “Inside Out” films. It’s one of the reasons they hit so hard, no matter how old you are. Because sadly, the things Riley is wrestling with are the same things a lot of people continue to wrestle with their entire adult lives: change, disappointment, fear, even just dealing with other people.

Moving from Minnesota to San Francisco was a pretty big challenge in the first movie, but the new film has an even bigger challenge in store for Riley: puberty. Our hero is now thirteen years old, and all the abject horrors of the teen years—especially the middle school years—come crashing down when Riley heads off to a summer hockey camp with two of her closest teammates. On the way, she finds out her friends will be heading off to a different school in the fall, and once at the camp, Riley is presented with the temptation to team up with some of the popular kids on the high school team, which threatens to change her entire personality.

This brings us to the action inside Riley’s mind. In recent years, Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), and the team have gotten into the bad habit of shuffling off Riley’s undesirable memories to a storage dump at the back of her mind. But that foreboding practice gets set aside when puberty brings a new group of emotions to Riley’s “control room.” Now the veterans have to fight for control with new competitors like Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), Ennui (Adele Exarchopoulos), and worst of all, Anxiety (Maya Hawke). In no time, years of hard work get tossed aside as Riley’s personality seemingly gets rebuilt from scratch, this time with horrible sentiments like “I’m not good enough” providing the foundational blocks.

The movie plays this out with the old emotions getting banished to the back of Riley’s mind with the undesirable memories, then having to fight their way back to the control room, where Anxiety and co. have been running amok. In the “real world,” Riley is making drastic changes to her appearance and personality to find a new place in her environment, and threatening to derail all her best qualities in pursuit of a promising new future.

The new film keeps up the clever approach of the original, though it doesn’t offer a lot in terms of new twists and turns. But the basic idea is still meaningful enough that simply adding the specter of puberty and a handful of new emotions is enough to keep things engaging.

Funny enough, the animation and performances don’t especially stand out, but in a film like this, where the concept and the story are really what’s critical, it almost doesn’t matter. Altogether, “Inside Out 2” probably isn’t as good as the first film, but it’s not just a rehash, either. It’s a logical next step in a relatable journey that could keep generating new movies well into Riley’s adulthood. In fact, given the comic cutaways to the control rooms in Riley’s parents’ minds, an adult version of “Inside Out” could be a lot of fun.

“Inside Out 2” is rated PG, basically because it explores all those aforementioned emotions and themes.

The post Creative ‘Inside Out 2’ explores the high stakes of puberty appeared first on Utah.Film.

About an hour into “Encanto,” my five-year-old niece leaned over and started asking me if the movie was almost done. This could mean a lot of things, and it could mean absolutely nothing, but it does support a gut feeling that the latest Pixar movie is geared toward adults a little more than to kids.

There’s one thing I really like about “Encanto,” though, and it’s almost enough to carry what is otherwise a so-so entry into the Pixar canon.

The story follows a young woman named Mirabel (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz), who holds the distinct honor of being the one member of her family who is not special. But let me back up a bit. Mirabel’s family is steeped in history and tradition, having escaped persecution decades earlier to establish a special home–an “Encanto”–in a new land. This home is more than a metaphor for the heart of its residents; it seems to possess a special magic that is disbursed to the different family members in the form of super powers during a sacred ceremony. Pepa (Carolina Gaitan) can influence the weather with her emotions. Luisa (Jessica Darrow) possesses great strength. Isabela (Diane Guerrero) can make things grow.

Mirabel has no special power, and partway into the movie, we relive the terrible moment where she steps up to receive her gift, and is denied. This alone is what won me over to “Encanto.” After decades watching the exploits of the uniquely gifted “chosen ones” of so many super heroes and franchise protagonists, from Harry Potter to Luke Skywalker, I loved the focus on the character who wasn’t special…at least on the surface.

Of course, Mirabel is plenty special, as the film goes on to explain as she steps up to help her family when the house’s magic seems to falter. To do so, she must recruit the family’s pariah Bruno (John Leguizamo), whose prophetic gift caused a lot of grief in years’ past.

The messaging is what carries the film, and the conflicted messaging at the end is what made it stumble for me, at least a little bit. But by that point, my niece wasn’t paying as close attention (word is she enjoyed the film just fine when she went again with her sisters a couple of weeks later, for what it’s worth). It’s also worth noting that “Encanto” is a musical, though not being a musical fan, I can’t say much more than to acknowledge that “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” was the only song that stood out to me.

Overall, “Encanto” is a sweet story that feels appropriate in that sub-genre of animated Disney/Pixar movies like “Coco” and “Moana,” that sets out to celebrate the beauties of cultures while they shoot for that critical balance between kid-pleasing and parent-pleasing. “Encanto” isn’t the best of these movies (“Moana” is my current favorite), but it’s still comfortably in the “worth seeing” tier of family animation.

Even if it seems to be shooting for an older segment of the family.

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