Look, there were good parts to this movie, including jokes that made me laugh and scenes that made me tear up. It just seems weird to feel continuity lockout from a Toy Story movie (never having seen the fourth one), and that made me wonder if this movie needed to exist.

What’s more, I have a rule of thumb that good tech criticism in fiction needs to target the companies as much as the computers, and this fails that test. While the movie stops short of moral panic (and intentionally so), it gets close, and critiques that could be good feel a bit shallow and obvious to me.

There’s lots to like about this movie: a good message, some good jokes, and some animation gags that I really liked. It’s hard to live up to the original film, though, and this just didn’t feel as tight. Parts of the plot felt rushed, the internal logic of the first film wasn’t as present, and it felt repetitive with some of the plot beats. I’m glad I saw it, but I think the first captures most of the magic that’s here—and more besides.

Lots to love in this movie: The animation is gorgeous, the concept is interesting, the metaphors are well-meaning, and there are plenty of funny bits. There seemed to be too many subplots, though, and when any of them saw a shake-up, it didn’t always feel deserved. It also feels essentialist in the way that D&D does—yes, differences make sense in the fictional world, but since we’re meant to read them onto the real world, it doesn’t always sit right. There are also bits that go unexplained or that don’t hold up to much thinking. I get that it’s a Pixar movie, but they still bugged me when I sat to think about it. I enjoyed it and would watch it again, but it seems like it was an excuse to do some cool animation and that the rest of the movie suffers from it.