Josh Cooley
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Connections, in both directions
Pixar has a knack for crafting motion pictures that explore adult themes while still telling age-appropriate narratives for the little ones — artistic independence and "Ratatouille," environmentalism and "Wall-E," grief and "Up," etc. "Toy Story 4" continues this tradition, and while it packs more than a few emotional wallops, this doesn't make it any less of a bright, colorful and humor-filled experience.
Directed by Josh Cooley (his feature debut, following prior credits as a writer on 2015's Inside Out and storyboard artist for popular titles such as The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007) and Up (2009), the film surpasses its predecessors as a work of supreme visual splendour: rendering the minutiae of a rainstorm, or (in a slightly more foreboding manner) the membranous layers of dust in an antique store with hyperreal precision.
But those existential elements also reminded me of Pixar’s ability to continually tackle life’s big questions in its films, whether in those first 20 minutes of Up, the opening 30 minutes of Wall-E, or the whole journey of its central protagonist in Inside/Out (which, coincidentally, Cooley helped to create).
But this isn’t Up or The Land Before Time .
However, given his background working on films like Disney•Pixar’s Up and having worked on the screenplay on Inside Out, Cooley more than knows how to handle the balance between the light-hearted fun that Disney•Pixar films contain while also maintaining that delicate balance with the more serious, oftentimes poignant themes interwoven in the script.
Directed by first-time feature director Josh Cooley, this opening will likely end up being considered alongside WALL-E and Up as one of Pixar’s greatest introductory sequences.
2009’s Toy Story 3 seemed like the definitive end to the Pixar series begun in 1995.
With Toy Story 3, many of us cried because we were the ones leaving our toys behind just as Andy was, letting them become our past as we grew into our adult ways.
In “Toy Story 3,” that dark political privilege fell to a fluffy bear who smelled of strawberries; this time, authority rests with Gabby Gabby (Christina Hendricks), a glass-eyed doll of yesteryear, who has a busted voice box and badly needs a working one to replace it.
There’s a heartfelt “saying goodbye” sequence in Toy Story 4 that, while quite emotionally hefty, fails to even compare to Toy Story 3 ’s final scene.
"There are jump scares here worthy of [ Evil Dead director] Sam Raimi, and a cunning nod to The Shining ," observes GamesRadar .
Even before the departure of disgraced honcho John Lasseter, Pixar was justly criticized for being a boy’s club, cranking out one male-directed film after another with only male protagonists and mostly male ensembles, until Brave (which was taken from its female originator, Brenda Chapman, and completed by Mark Andrews), followed by Inside Out and Finding Dory (both directed by men).
In 2019, I felt like I was having an existential crisis and didn’t know what I was doing with my life, much like Forky’s struggle to understand his purpose.
Eventually, Toy Story 4 waltzed in, somewhat controversially, to ask whether Woody could have a life after ownership.
Toy Story 1 to 3 is a near-perfect trilogy, and Toy Story 4 is brilliantly heartwarming in its own right.
After the chaotic RV excursion in Toy Story 4, our core characters are back at home with Bonnie…
"Toy Story 4" arrived with the assumption of corporate-mandated decision-making, only to shock everyone with a heartfelt send-off for Woody…
While Toy Story 4 was both critically acclaimed and commercially successful, it also represented a departure from the emotional finality of the original trilogy.
The two films don’t really feel like a series— they’re separate stories set in the same world: more like The LEGO Batman Movie is to The LEGO Movie than Avengers: Endgame to Avengers: Infinity War .
Whereas Pixar movies have consistently put their trust in earnest emotions, other studios poke fun at such sentimentality, from the sarcasm of “Shrek” to the wink-wink self-awareness of “The Lego Movie.”
Thor: Ragnarok isn't as relevant as the carefully coloured-in Black Widow or as the similarly IP-respecting Transformers One.
…writers Eric Pearson (Black Widow, Transformers One)…
Eric Pearson (Transformers One)…
…professional rewrite specialist Eric Pearson (Transformers One)…
…scripted banter in this movie written by professional rewrite specialist Eric Pearson (Transformers One)…
A top-flight cast helps to elevate Eric Pearson (The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Transformers One, Black Widow) and Joanna Calo’s (Beef, Lost Ollie, The Bear) multi-layered screenplay above and beyond what's on the page.
But on the whole, "Toy Story 4"—which was written by Stephanie Folsom and Pixar veteran Andrew Stanton (" Finding Nemo ") and directed by Josh Cooley (" Inside Out ")—breaks somewhat with tradition, in that it's less of a straightforward, linear comedy-adventure than a patchwork of scenes, moments, and groups of characters, unified more by shared themes and ideas than by any particular thing that happens.
Josh Cooley (who co-wrote Inside Out ) makes his feature directorial debut with this installment.
Directed by Josh Cooley (his feature debut, following prior credits as a writer on 2015's Inside Out and storyboard artist for popular titles such as The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007) and Up (2009), the film surpasses its predecessors as a work of supreme visual splendour: rendering the minutiae of a rainstorm, or (in a slightly more foreboding manner) the membranous layers of dust in an antique store with hyperreal precision.
Director Josh Cooley, one of the “Inside Out” writers, keeps the humor well-timed, and the animation itself is astounding, far beyond what was possible in the original 1995 “Toy Story.”
Debutant feature director Josh Cooley (who co-wrote the Inside Out screenplay) and his seven fellow writers have crafted a terrific tale which only the hardest of hearts will fail to be moved by.
Toy Story 4 is directed by Josh Cooley, who cowrote Inside Out, Pixar’s essay on childhood sadness , and you see the same ideas at work in the arts-and-crafts sequence — Bonnie converting her feelings into an impulse to invent, creating an entity to make her feel less alone (it’s funny that this process is mediated by Hanks, who did the same thing in Castaway).
Verily, the finest moments in the Pixar pantheon—the opening scenes-from-a-marriage sequence in 2009’s Up , the titanic final performance of “Remember Me” in 2017’s majestic Coco , the whole of 2015’s fucking WHAT IF FEELINGS HAD FEELINGS monstrosity Inside Out —tend to double as the most painful.
Director Josh Cooley (a series neophyte) and executive producer Andrew Stanton (who helped write the first two Toy Storys, directed Finding Dory, and co-wrote and directed WALL·E), build the explanation into Woody’s latest quest.