BACK TO THE TOY BOX

By now, the Toy Story franchise is beginning to give the Fast & Furious series a run for its money. Okay, that’s a stretch, but did we really need more of these movies after the supposed “last” and loved Toy Story 3?

Apparently, Pixar, the studio that birthed the beloved universe of Buzz Lightyear and Sheriff Woody, feels obligated to keep things going, because the films keep making money. And Disney, the studio’s parent company, has never shied away from cash-cow sequels, just as it did with “Cars.”

In this fifth entry of the series, we’re focusing on a sweet kid named Bonnie, who just can’t seem to connect with her neighbors, try as she might. For one thing, Bonnie plays with dolls, like the Cowgirl figure Jessie of the previous movies, voiced by Joan Cusack.

Her friends, meanwhile, are glued to their tablets, having given up playing with dolls. Bonnie gets the outcast treatment on a sleepover because she has yet to go digital. And this trend is highlighted one night when Bonnie looks out the window and sees the other children bathed in the digital blue light of their elecronics.

Bonnie’s parents sense this is where they need to intervene and gift the girl with her own tablet, called Lilypad. Certainly, they think, friends will follow.

But her new Lilypad friends are screen addicts and pressure Bonnie to give up her “antique” toys and join the digital generation. You need to grow up, they tell her.

Jessie is worried that screen-addicted kids grow up too fast and she aims to slow things down. Her other toy friends lament that they soon could be obsolete, too, left in the proverbial toy box. And that sort of happens in one of the livelier scenes of the movie.

The fear crystalizes in an ominous warning from Woody (Tom Hanks): “Toys are for play but tech is for everything.”

And by the way, Woody and Buzz are peripheral characters in this Number 5. It’s almost like director Andrew Stanton (“WALL-e”) realized his new movie was favoring girls too much and added appearances by the famous pair to keep boy viewers engaged.

Being a Disney product, it’s also true that Toy Story 5 can’t bash digital devices too much because, after all, that’s how kid fans of the franchise are likely to view this and other Pixar productions.

The movie is charming, offers often striking animation to underscore its message of the power of play, but also hints that maybe it’s too late to ask kids to give up their screens, even for a little while. In fact, you begin to wonder if, this time around, a toy story is really aimed at adults who all too well recognize what of their own childhoods they have lost.