#ufohnoparty

“I’m not sure that’s how it works,” Tahani laughs.

“You don’t think?”

“I’m not sure. But there is something comforting, I think, in the choosing. That we chose each other. We chose each other, out of anyone and everyone who has ever died that is here with us right now.”

Something huge opens inside Eleanor at that. She never felt like someone had truly chosen her in her whole life. That someone wanted her for her and continued to want her.

If they were measuring time by Earth standards, it might have been millennia that they had been in the Good Place.

“Eleanor?” Tahani’s voice is soft in her ears. “Are you crying?”

Eleanor reaches up to her cheeks and finds them wet. “Oh, I guess so?”

Tahani pulls her tighter to her, sharing her warmth in the chill air.

“I wish I had met you when we were alive,” Eleanor confesses. “I wish we were the people we are now back then.”

“It never would have worked. We were too self-centered. We needed to be here, to go through what we’ve gone through to be who we are now.”

“I know. I know we’ve worked hard to get here.” Eleanor wipes her face. “I wish I hadn’t wasted my life.”

“Me too. But I’m glad I met you. I’m glad we’re here now.”

“Me too.”

“Maybe we could have been stars together,” Tahani says after a while. “On the astral plane or whatever.”

i was really looking forward to it because, although i thought toy story 3 was a perfect ending (a little sentimental, but it had every right to be), i didn’t begrudge them continuing the story, especially because a lot of the specials have been really good. i was also glad they were bringing bo peep back into the fold (ha) because while the explanation they give for her absence in ts3 is realistic and bittersweet, it was still going to be nice to see that thread wrapped up.

but omg. not like this.

all the original characters got completely shafted. buzz is flanderized so bad, 1000% more dumb than usual and has one (1) running gag that is his sole contribution to the film. the other original cast members have about five total lines between them. you could cut them all out and lose absolutely nothing.

the main new characters that they advertised, forky and the two carnival toys, are also washes. the fluffy ones are funny but that’s it. forky starts out promising -- a brand-new toy with an identity crisis is a perfect opportunity to articulate what being a toy is all about in a way that deepens our understanding of all the characters. he is a disposable thing, he doesn’t want this identity, he isn’t sure of his purpose -- all things that could have reflected the more complex versions of what our more established characters are also going through. but he is essentially a relay stick that the toys are very focused on saving and they don’t go into his psychology at all. in fact, he’s pretty much over his existential crisis after one (1) long talk with woody. 

the basic plot is that woody feels a little underused after moving to bonnie’s. he’s no longer the de facto leader of the group, and bonnie’s bored with him. he decides he will help her in any way he can, breaking a few rules to make sure bonnie has the emotional support she needs. he gives her the tools she needs at kindergarten to make a new toy -- forky. so he feels forky is his responsibility, and when bonnie goes on a road trip and forky flings himself out the window, woody goes above and beyond to make sure bonnie has him when they head off again. in getting forky back to the family, he finds bo peep in an antique store, where she’s become a leader of another toy group who choose to be played with by kids in playgrounds every day without going home to one particular kid. they’re free-range, basically, and they find themselves more fulfilled that way because they don’t have to deal with the massive heartbreak of a kid outgrowing them. the other main plot is that there’s a talking doll in the antique shop who wants woody’s voicebox so she can fix her broken one and finally get adopted by a kid. 

all the kids were annoying in that they kept losing their toys every 5 minutes and never knowing where they put them. it got so repetitive after a while, and the script is very repetitive in general. forky keeps getting lost and they keep trying to break into the same place. it felt weak just on a plot level, though there are some nice set pieces, as always.

bo peep is a total asshole in this movie. she’s always angry at woody for choosing kids over her (???), or for being overly fond of kids who don’t love him back. (if all this sounds like the villain speeches from every other toy story movie, YOU’RE RIGHT! IT DOES!) but nobody ever pushes back hard on bo’s philosophy, which is to see the world instead of caring for a kid. it’s clear she has unresolved trauma from being given away (like, she chose to leave, sort of, but only after molly made it clear she was over her), but we don’t dig into that at all. instead, woody’s every selfless instinct of never leaving a toy behind is made out to be this Horrible Destructive Thing that he has to get over. at one point, woody says that he’s helping bring forky back because it’s the last responsibility he has, that he fully expects to go back to bonnie and never get played with again, which we are pretty much just asked to accept, as if bonnie didn’t LOVE him in all the other times we’ve seen her, and as if the toys didn’t wait 10 YEARS to get looked at by andy. i get that you can frame this as kind of unhealthy for toys, but there’s a way to let ALL the toys we know grapple with this and decide what’s a better fit for them -- bonding fiercely and recklessly with a single kid, being in a museum, being in a daycare, living for themselves??? like. but there aren’t even arguments in this movie, like every other movie has had. woody’s just like “i’m loyal!” and bo’s like “well it’s a bad quality!” and then 2 seconds later she’s like, “but that’s why i love you.” i’m exhausted. and none of the other characters get to chime in on this AT ALL.

(there is one good new character, gabby gabby, who wants woody’s voicebox, and she has a pretty good little arc. but they don’t tie her arc into woody’s well enough, and it feels kind of disconnected from everything else, imo. i can totally see the parallels they could have drawn and the choices they could have made to make them good foils for each other, but they just drop the ball at the last minute.)

anyway the movie ends with woody leaving bonnie and buzz and the entire gang to go traipse around with bo after she relentlessly negged him the whole movie and after we have failed to get a single deep conversation about what being a toy really means and how we should weigh our own fulfillment over dangerous love that might hurt us and whether bo and woody aren’t just different people who don’t seem that compatible. 

like, i was FUMING in the theater because every single movie has been about woody choosing to protect his team!!! not just because he’s selfless (he’s fucking NOT, he’s often a selfish, blind asshole, but he has great qualities that make him a great leader and someone who cares for others a lot, despite the fact that it bruises his ego sometimes!) it’s been established that it doesn’t REALLY MATTER if they’re getting played with AS LONG AS THEY’RE TOGETHER. the movies are about the love that kids put into toys and the love that toys put into each other, but woody just like ... doesn’t make a case for that. he just agrees that bo is right and up and leaves and it’s awful. it’s all SO FORCED and the characterizations are so WEAK and OUT-OF-CHARACTER that i didn’t buy a single thing this movie was asking me to swallow. like caring about kids is dangerous and unhealthy all of a sudden? IT’S FUCKING NOT. It’s not all about Woody ? And Woody isn’t even unsatisfied until Bo tells him he is, honestly. God. I just. Felt like there were a million potential plots they could have done that would have been SO GOOD and everything just falls so flat.