"You have a friend in me ..." says the unmistakable song that acts as a real anthem for this irresistible series that has already taken its first step back in 1995. An era in which digital in animated cinema was only synonymous with sterile advertisements and forgettable experiments . There Pixar, despite having been founded in 1986, it will have to wait for that fateful year to get noticed thanks to the birth of the iconic Sheriff Woody and his friend Buzz Lightyear. Unknowing carriers of the old and the new clashing, of the obsolete animation style and the more realistic CGI who, just like these characters, will initially face each other hard-nosed and then find an indissoluble bond over time. The beauty of Pixar's works lies above all in the most explicit stories and feelings, in making anything reproduced in CGI human and tangible. For this reason, older films hold up well the signs of aging and can be revisited just like real classics in the Disney way. The first Toy Stories are just that: true classics. Nine years after the previous one "Toy Story 3 - The Great Escape" the gang of toys that made the Pixar studio known all over the world for that magical and unmistakable touch that it knows how to instill in its stories steeped in poetry and increasingly futuristic graphics is back. This is a rescue film Toy Story 4. Saving our fellow men (the toys) and saving ourselves. Deprived of the canonical initial short (the first time since 1998), the film begins with a loss that will trigger an On the Road journey through a thousand ups and downs to recover a reluctant toy and understand the purpose of its existence.
The Sheriff's Journey
In this new and sparkling chapter, the cowboy Woody is the master. The film is practically a tribute to the main character in his most solitary and complicated adventure: a journey inside and outside oneself, an inner journey to look back and grasp one's future. This time the narrative choice is to leave behind the story with the old master Andy - now a teenager and ready for college already in the previous chapter - to introduce us to the little girl Bonnie, through the passage of delivery of her toys. We spoke at the beginning of loss, ambitions and new life. There are toys that will continue undeterred in their ideals of growing and helping their owner, regardless of whether they will be chosen in games or forgotten on a shelf; while others more disillusioned will choose a life on the margins to safeguard themselves in the perennial search for a new motivation to move forward. Emblematic is the bond between Woody and a character who makes a great return in the saga (in the previous chapter he was absent) the porcelain shepherdess Bo Peep: the two will find themselves profoundly changed since the last time they met and with two visions of existence at the antipodes. Toy Story 4 is an even more sensitive chapter towards the psychology of the toy and its life parable: the lived-in toy, antiquated and of mere consumption. It outlines more in depth the loneliness in abandonment and its chronology of life, between the changes of hands of the various owners to its most absolute essence, showing the various branches of their psychology, but above all, conveying their humanity and their indissoluble principles in the being attached to your baby like a motherly spirit nanny. A fun chapter but also more psychological in representing certain depressions that these characters experience: from the reluctant toy that loves the garbage it comes from to the one that tries to help its owner despite being aware that it is not her favorite toy. In all of this, the only thing that probably suffers is the friendship with Buzz. Perhaps the most sincere act of friendship in the whole film, which almost entirely leaves the scene to the more monographic and characterized story on Woody's shoulders. Duty to mention Fabrizio Frizzi who delivers his sheriff to the excellent voice of Angelo Maggi (even Woody will deliver a certain star to someone), a safe and "familiar" choice not to upset (hopefully) anyone. Quite similar in stamp to that of Frizzi and consistent on paper to be the official voice actor of Tom Hanks (Woody's original voice). Also stand out: Luca Laurenti to give the voice to the dazed Forky e Corrado Guzzanti in the excellent characterization of the irresistible Duke Caboom, the stunt toy that fails to live up to advertising expectations.
