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Toy Story 4 (U)
Narratively speaking there’s no reason for Toy Story 4 to exist. When the third film ended with Woody and Buzz learning to let go of the collegebound Andy by embracing their new destiny as hand-me-down toys, this groundbreaking franchise found a philosophically and emotionally rich way to bow out gracefully. But in an era of blockbuster cinema in which no successful saga is ever truly over, a belated, vaguely pointless encore is now upon us. The good news is that Pixar does pointlessness exceptionally well. In fact, with typical Pixar panache, it makes pointlessness the meta-theme of this latest instalment, which sees Woody (once again winningly voiced by Tom Hanks) suffering from an existential crisis brought on by the realisation that he’s already fulfilled his purpose in life. That purpose was to be the best toy he could be for the now-adult Andy and with new owner Bonnie favouring other toys in her collection, he’s suddenly confronted with the reality of a safe if purposeless future staring into the abyss of his own obsolescence.
Building more explicitly on the parenting metaphors slyly teased out in the previous instalments, the film has Woody attempt to fill this inner void by devoting himself to a new character called Forky, who’s having trouble integrating into the world of Bonnie’s toys. If there’s a flash of greatness in Toy
Story 4, it’s this new character – a pipe-cleaner-armed former spork Frankensteined into existence by Bonnie on her first terrifying day of nursery and subsequently freaked out by his trash-can origins. Alas, the film doesn’t really do enough with this; instead, when a family road trip results in Forky and Woody getting trapped in an antique shop, the scene is set for yet another elaborate rescue mission from yet another new group of vaguely creepy toys, among them an Annabelle-like vintage doll called Gabby Gabby (Christina Hendricks) and her army of ventriloquist’s dummy henchmen. On the plus side, Keanu Reeves is pretty funny as a Canadian daredevil doll who goes by the moniker Duke Caboom.
Child’s Play (15)
In a supreme spot of cinema trolling, this reboot of the original toys-arealive movie from 1988 was released worldwide on the same day as Toy
Story 4. Unfortunately, that might be the best joke in this new version, which casts Mark Hamill as the voice of the maniacal Chucky and features a winking nod to Toy Story by naming the kid he terrorises Andy. Updated for the smartphone age, Chucky is now connected to the cloud, able to hack data and can learn at an exponential rate. Alas, thanks to a disgruntled factory worker in Vietnam, this particular highspec doll has had its safety features disabled, which means he can mimic or enact behaviour he thinks will benefit his human friend, even if that involves doing terrible things to cats, old ladies and the beer-swilling loser Andy’s mother (Aubrey Plaza) is sleeping with. The special effects are certainly well done and the tech angle is a decent idea. If only the script was smart enough to pull off its postmodern flourishes.
The Flood (15)
A hardened immigration officer (Lena Headey) finds her proficiency for processing cases tested by the nobility of an apparently dangerous asylum seeker (Ivanno Jeremiah) in this worthy but dull drama about the global refugee crisis. The cast (which includes Headey’s Game of
Thrones co-star Iain Glenn) are fine, but Headey’s character is ill-served by cliché-ridden backstory and the dramatic twist is easily guessable. ■