I wonder if this film will give very young children nightmares! 80%

Rating: 8/10 (26 July 2019)

It's been years since I saw the last Toy Story sequel, which was Toy Story 3, I suppose (I had to look up the Wikipedia entry for that earlier film to see if the plot rang any bells for me). It sounded vaguely familiar, so I just might have seen them all by now. Perhaps the fact that I can't really recall any of the previous films in the series doesn't speak too well of them. Sure, I could recognise a photo of Woody, or Buzz Lightyear etc, if you had showed them to me prior to watching this latest instalment. On a good day, I could have even have remembered their names! It should be noted that I saw the series as a young adult at the cinema, not an impressionable child.
That being said, I'm guessing that this is the best film in the series. It has quite mature themes of love, loss and sacrifice.
The plot revolves around the group of toys' new owner (I'd forgotten their old one, to tell you the truth!) a young girl called "Bonnie", adjusting to life starting kindergarten for the first time. Finding it difficult to fit in at kindergarten, Bonnie creates a toy from a plastic spork (i.e. a cross between a spoon and a fork, used at fast food restaurants). She becomes very attached to it and is unaware of its existential crisis caused by it being made into a toy.
Soon after, Bonnie's family embark on a road trip, with her toys. Plenty of drama ensues.
Now, to why I wonder whether this film might be scary to very young children:
Things are decidedly creepy in an antique store some of Bonnie's toys visit on their road trip. As an adult, I was amused by a jump scare, which fans of adult of horror movies would be used to. No doubt completely going over the heads of children, there was, I think, the use of a song which can be heard in the classic adult horror film "The shining" (based on Stephen King's novel of the same name).
Two toy characters, who sound like African Americans, are almost psychopathic, one could say! They fantasise about being violent to humans and in one scene, it was implied (or I had inferred) that they had killed a human. Intended to be comical characters, they do strike me as an odd choice to include in a film aimed at young children, especially.
Why do I mention this? Years ago I heard of a review in the US media about the Australian film "Babe: Pig in the city" which commented that it would be scary for children to view. Not having seen that film, I can't comment about that criticism, however, if you feel such criticisms are important to flag, then I've just done that here.
As an adult, I was amused by parts of the film. There is some slapstick humour to it. At least once I had a literal "laugh-out-loud" moment. I also appreciated the subtlety of the film. For instance, at times the dialogue would make you realise that what you'd heard before was ambiguous, and the later dialogue would disambiguate what you had heard before. That was nicely done in a scene involving the toys Woody, Buzz and Bo Peep, near the end.
Random observations:
* There is a scene in the film inside the antique store. It struck me as having video game potential...kind of like a Toy Story meets Metal Gear Solid game.
* ...what some of the toys do to a young man running a game of chance at the carnival struck me as being...somewhat socialist in nature! Bad for business, surely!
* The closing credits has an "R.I.P" for Don Rickles. Looking at Wikipedia's entry for this latest film now, I see that they used archival audio for his character's dialogue.
In conclusion, since I can't remember much of the preceding films' content (and former The Age newspaper columnist Jim Schembri's hope that Toy Story 3 be the last in the franchise as he liked it so much), I'd say that Toy Story 4 is the perfect ending to this story. I like how it has ended and I'm not really sure where the creatives can go to from here to keep milking this cash cow. Sequels would be contrived and any "final" film in the franchise would, no doubt, be subject to the studio not wanting to milk the series for more money...in which case they could reboot it...or start a new franchise with different characters...with maybe some cameos from the original series. I dunno.
N.B. I was going to give this film a score of 75+% but I've bumped that up to 80% just for the scene involving Duke Caboom's last jump on his motorbike!