Going out without a bang.

Rating: 5/10 (17 January 2020)

As the supposed end to the Toy Story series, this film is extremely underwhelming.
This sequel didn't really need to exist, and it never really feels like it justifies its own existence other than to answer a single question that arose from one line in Toy Story 3 that I felt we didn't really need answering.
For some reason, in this film, Buzz Lightyear is suddenly an idiot and truly believes his voice box is his inner conscious and spends the entire film making decisions based around that. Why they chose to go for this kind of route instead of something like Toy Story 2 where a small group of them go out on an adventure baffles me.
There's not much to say about the story on a whole apart from the ending, which I was really excited for after hearing reports that the voice actors couldn't finish their lines without crying. And then it happened; Woody left. But the issue is, I felt nothing, and I don't feel like that's my fault. The toys Woody was saying goodbye to after all these years had been stuck inside an RV whilst Woody was out doing his own thing. Most of them barely even say anything throughout the entire film. Even during the goodbye scene, barely any of them say a word and nobody gets a special farewell even though so many of these characters have unique personalities and would all react differently to their best friend and leader leaving them behind. It just felt very poorly handled.
It's not all bad, however. The animation is undeniably beautiful, which is obviously a given for a Pixar film, but this one makes it unique by playing with the depth of field so we really see the world the way the toys see it. And somehow, even now, Pixar manages to blow my mind with their photo-realistic environments and water effects. Couple this with the aforementioned use of the DOF, and the look of this film really stands out compared to other Pixar films. Besides the obvious, there are plenty of details on every single character, especially signs of wear on some of the older toys; just signs that the character designers and animators really put their A game into every single frame. It just makes it all the more frustrating this below average script that makes no sense was wasted on such gorgeous animation.