Greta Lee Voices Lilypad as Toy Story 5 Toys Face New Threat
toy story 5 toys face a new threat in Lilypad, a creepy tablet voiced by Greta Lee that enters the children’s world and threatens their existence. The fifth episode of the franchise leans hard into the old toys-versus-new tech divide, but the review says Pixar blunts its own central idea.
Greta Lee’s Lilypad
Greta Lee gives voice to the device at the center of the film, and Lilypad is not just another gadget in the background. Bonnie gets one and is initially thrilled by how it connects her with other girls, which sends the story toward cruelty and online bullying rather than simple playtime rivalry.
review calls the film “the sinister way addictive tech devices are undermining the imaginative play that kids once had with honest-to-goodness toys,” which is the cleanest version of what the movie is trying to do. That puts Toy Story 5 back in the franchise’s long-running lane of toys facing obsolescence, only now the rival is a tablet that speaks the language of belonging.
Buzz Woody Jessie
Tim Allen returns as Buzz Lightyear, Tom Hanks as Woody and Joan Cusack as Jessie, with Scarlett Spears playing Bonnie. Woody is living away from Buzz, Jessie and Bonnie in a feral outdoor existence, while Bo Peep, voiced by Annie Potts, remains part of his orbit.
Jessie still belongs to Bonnie from the fourth movie, and the review ties the new film to Toy Story 2 by recalling Jessie’s “When She Loved Me.” That link matters because the movie is trying to revive the franchise’s emotional machinery even as it introduces a fresh piece of tech designed to hijack a child’s attention.
Bo Peep and Blaze
Mykal-Michelle Harris plays Blaze, the kid Jessie meets on a farm, and Conan O’Brien voices Smarty Pants, an obsolete battery-powered proto-tech device with an LCD display. A rogue platoon of upgraded Buzzes is also needed to sort out a plot complication, which gives the story a mechanical fix for a problem that starts as an emotional one.
The review says a new song by Taylor Swift prominently recalls the Jessie moment from Toy Story 2, but it also lands on a sharp objection: Lilypad’s sentimental self-sacrifice prompted a “Really?” That reaction is the friction point in the film’s design, because the threat is supposed to feel sinister while the resolution leans softer than the setup.
Toy Story 5 looks most interesting when it treats tech as a predator of imagination, not as a cute accessory. If the movie cannot keep that edge, the series’ own history suggests the toys lose more than one battle for Bonnie’s attention.
