Best Keanu: “It was the happiest Boxing Day of my life.”

Best Keanu (honorable mention): “Yes I Canada!”

The best part of Toy Story 4 is Keanu Reeves’ ultra-Canadian (or stereotypically Canadian, or a non-Canadian perception of Canadian) turn as the toy with the crisis of confidence, Duke Caboom, “Canada’s Greatest Stuntman.” Caboom, like all toys in the Toy Story universe, save the “lost” toys who go on to find themselves, wants nothing more than to be loved and played with by their kid.

Caboom, who shows up in a back room of a toy storage closet where broken and otherwise forgotten toys sit in an antique store, has an old trauma: he was gifted (after) Christmas to his kid, Rejean — and this being after Christmas, and Caboom and Rejean being Canadian, the toy exclaims, “it was the best Boxing Day of my life!” — but Caboom the real-life toy failed to live up to the hefty expectations made by the toy’s commercials. Caboom crashed and Rejean promptly threw him away.

Caboom has a revelation of sorts when he realizes he can be the best toy he is, right now, and in so doing help Woody and Bo in their quest to rescue Woody’s new kid’s favourite toy, a craft project she made during kindergarten orientation. Caboom performs some kick-ass stunts, not always hitting the landing, but getting the job done every time throughout the film. It’s cute and fun.

Watching Toy Story 4, my first ever experience watching any Toy Story film, I remembered the quote I put on the front page of this site from A.O. Scott in the New York Times, about Keanu Reeves: “Can you name one film that has not been improved by his presence?” Toy Story 4 was definitely improved by Keanu’s presence, if only his voice. I suppose there’s a chance that the Toy Story franchise just isn’t my thing and I can’t see how good it is, but my suspicion is that by the fourth film, some 24 years after the first, the movies are no longer innovative or particularly creative as they once were and pretty much amount to a cash grab for Disney.

Toy Story 4 has a lot of famous voices, as these films typically do; the now departed Betty White, the dynamic duo of Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key, and Flea as the announcer for Duke Caboom’s commercial that caused Canada’s greatest stuntman such pain. (I was about to write this is the third Keanu-Flea pairing, but as it turns out Flea wasn’t in Point Break, just Anthony Kiedis, so it’s just Toy Story 4 and My Own Private Idaho, and it was barely a pairing in either).

That’s all to say, this movie is cute. It’s great! A worthwhile watch. It’s a reminder that Keanu is an action star and spent some of his childhood in Canada, because those both come through in Duke Caboom.

[September 2023]