‘Toy Story 5’ Breaks The Wrong Kind Of Record For Pixar

The reviews are in, and while “Toy Story 5” is getting high marks, it currently holds the lowest critic score out of all the mainline films in the franchise. 

The latest installment, which hits theaters this Friday, June 19, has a 94% critics’ rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

In “Toy Story 5,” the gang must contend with children who are enamored with technology and what it means for the future of play. Woody, Buzz, and the others are all highly skeptical of a new tablet named Lilypad.

“As a piece of family-entertainment content it has the unblemished sheen of a brand new smartphone. But at heart, it has gone dead,” the reviewer from the Guardian wrote, giving the new film just two stars out of five. 

“For all the intensive, high-energy creative work that has clearly gone into this film’s every frame, the jeopardy, the novelty, the ideas and the passion are lacking; the crucial Toy Story theme of mortality feels underpowered.”

“Alas, Toy Story doesn’t follow through on its initial thesis that technology has turned humankind into a bunch of cruel, narcissistic zombies … But we have enough of that in the real world, so consider this movie an escape of sorts,” the Boston Globe reviewer wrote.

“The studio naturally holds back from portraying Lily as an all-out villain — more a misguided soul, merely concerned with what’s best for Bonnie. But the film fails to drum up any kind of meaningful conclusion on the matter, even if it’s a nuanced one,” said the review from the Independent.

Not all the reviews were negative, however, with the reviewer from Variety saying, “It’s a sublime summing up, a movie that reflects the whole series in its magic mirror, and (just maybe) a perfect ending.” But even with the support, it fell behind the rating of the original “Toy Story” and the other three sequels. The next lowest-rated installment is “Toy Story 4,” which has a 97% rating. “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2” each have a perfect 100%. 

Film director Andrew Stanton explained during a previous interview that Lilypad is not the villain of the movie in the traditional sense.

The teaser trailer, released in November, indicated that a new tablet called “Lilypad” steals main character Bonnie’s attention as she forgoes playing to scroll. This recognizable storyline immediately resonated with parents and helped justify the idea of yet another “Toy Story” sequel.

“[Lilypad] is [the villain] to the toys because they’re understandably intimidated,” Stanton told Variety while clarifying the iPad stand-in is not meant to be the overall bad guy.

“She’s just the next phase in Bonnie’s life. She’s built like a toy in the sense that she wants to help the kid go forward, but she’s got very different skills and zero experience, whereas Jessie has nothing but experience and is probably unprepared for what to do.”

Co-director McKenna Harris told the outlet that several “Toy Story 5” creators pushed to turn Lilypad into a true villain, but that idea was ultimately shot down.

“Lots of people at the studio wanted her to be a villain, and it was so hard to strike the balance because I think we all come in with such loaded emotions towards devices. At the end of the day, it never made sense,” she said.