Greta Lee Grows Lilypad in Toy Story 5 Review
toy story 5 review: Greta Lee voices Lilypad, the creepy tablet at the center of Pixar’s fifth Toy Story film, and says the device gives the movie its sharpest idea. The problem is that the review finds the film backing away from its own premise, softening a battle over addictive tech devices and imaginative play.
Greta Lee and Lilypad
Greta Lee’s Lilypad enters the children’s world as a sinister new tablet that threatens the toys’ existence. The review says Bonnie, voiced by Scarlett Spears, is initially thrilled because the device connects her with other girls, which sends her into a world of cruelty and online bullying.
That setup gives the film a practical edge parents will recognize immediately: the conflict is not just about toys losing space on a shelf, but about attention being pulled toward a device that flatters before it isolates. Jessie, voiced by Joan Cusack, belongs to Bonnie from the fourth movie, so the new threat lands inside a family arrangement the franchise has already established.
Woody, Buzz, and Jessie
Tom Hanks returns as Woody, now living away from the others in a feral outdoor existence beyond human control, while Annie Potts voices Bo Peep and Tim Allen voices Buzz Lightyear. Jessie’s thread gives the review its clearest emotional friction, because the film revives the loss-of-love plotline and tries to resolve it in a way the review calls spurious and unsatisfying.
The story also reaches back to Toy Story 2, where Jessie sang “When She Loved Me,” and to Toy Story 3, when Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear filled the villain role. The review says Toy Story 5 is as slick and smooth as Toy Story 6 or Toy Story 7 might be, but that polish comes with a cost: it lacks jeopardy, novelty, ideas and passion, and its crucial mortality theme feels underpowered.
Blaze and the battery gang
Mykal-Michelle Harris plays Blaze, a real horse lover and toy enthusiast on a farm, and Jessie’s encounter with him helps build a modest-hero gang. That group includes obsolete battery-powered proto-tech devices with LCD displays, plus Smarty Pants, a toilet trainer voiced by Conan O’Brien.
The review’s sharper point is that Pixar seems to have the ingredients for a clean big-tech parable and then blunts them. Lilypad’s arrival, Bonnie’s dependence on the tablet, and the turn to online bullying should have pushed the movie into harder territory, but the review says Toy Story 5 loses its nerve right where it should have committed.
With ’s review published on June 16, 2026, the immediate takeaway for viewers is straightforward: the film is being judged less as a nostalgia exercise than as a test of whether Pixar can still make the franchise’s old fear of replacement feel urgent. On this account, Greta Lee’s Lilypad is the most interesting thing in it, and the movie does not fully follow through on what she represents.
