Jean-Paul’s rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: A reasonable, if forgettable, denouement to the Toy Story franchise. Ah, who am I kidding, there will be a billion more stories.

“Toy Story 4” is a movie about letting go and moving on. In this case, it’s Woody (Tom Hanks) who is having trouble doing so. He is no longer the top toy in the closet and is often forgotten there, but he still is compelled to protect his kid even in his new unwanted status. When a new “toy” named Forky (Tony Hale) becomes the favorite toy, Woody must pull out all the stops to protect Forky and keep his kid happy.

The whole Forky story is an interesting sidebar about belonging and self-worth, but man does the setup for it go on for way too long. It is like every Saturday Night Live skit where the gag just keeps going on well after the laughs have died out. The movie is only an hour and forty minutes long and I think twenty minutes are Woody rescuing Forky from the trash can.

For a Pixar film, “Toy Story 4” turns pretty dark with the introduction of Gabby Gabby (Christina Hendricks), a 50s style doll with a broken voice box stuck in an antiques store. She rule the antiques store with a bunch of ventriloquist dummy henchtoys as her muscle. Those ventriloquist dummies are creepy as all get out. Added to the creepiness is the fact that they do not talk for some toy-logic reason that is not explained. And added to THAT creepiness is that they walk around like you’d expect a ventriloquist dummy to walk when it didn’t have a hand in it to control it.

Besides the creepy factor which may make it a bit too scary for younger children, “Toy Story 4” hits everything on the fun kids movie checklist. There is also enough adult enjoyment for parents or older kids at heart, but the fourth in the series is certainly the least in the series. Surprisingly and sadly, there was no short film at the beginning. Not sure if this is a move away from that tradition by Pixar or if the film was long enough by itself to not warrant a fun time filler.