Toy Story 5 To He-Man: A Quadruple Feature Review

Four movies in one sitting should feel like a dare, but that’s exactly what makes this Cinema Sunday so much fun. We jump from a heartfelt Toy Story 5 review with a very special guest (my daughter, fresh off her first movie theater trip) to a brutally honest Scary Movie reaction, then into a clean-comedy family film, and finally a big swing with Masters of the Universe. If you like movie review podcasts that give clear ratings and real reasons, this one moves fast and still goes deep where it counts. 

Toy Story 5 surprises us with how warm it is and how willing it feels to deal with modern kid problems, including bullying and the ways kids can be cruel. We also talk about the stuff parents immediately recognize: the popcorn, the candy, the wiggly seats, and the importance of theater etiquette when other families are not exactly whisper-quiet. It’s a sweet snapshot of why these characters still matter and why a sequel can work when the story earns it. 

Then we pivot into Scary Movie and ask a simple question: what happens when nostalgia is the best joke in the room? We break down why the comedy feels dated and chaotic, why “smart dumb” humor still takes craft, and why The Breadwinner lands as a decent, safe, clean family comedy that never fully becomes memorable. We close with Masters of the Universe, praising the action and Skeletor while debating whether the film “de-He-Mans” He-Man and muddies its own message about power and the sword. 

If you enjoy honest movie ratings, franchise talk, and quick-hit reviews across genres, subscribe, share this with a movie friend, and leave a review. Which of these four should we revisit with a deeper dive next?

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Transcript

Theme Song And Vibe

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Don't get back. Press play, it's a brand new day. With diving deep in the film's all away. From classics to the ones you missed. Grab your text, you get the gist. It's cinema sunday on the couch, critic show. Where the story shine and the appendance flow. Popcorn's got to take the bow. We laugh, we cry, we break the mold. It's cinema sundae. Let the credits roll.

Quadruple Feature Lineup

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Hello everyone, and welcome to a brand new episode of The Couch Critics. I'm your host, Nathan, and this is Cinema Sunday. And today we've got a wild one. This is a quadruple feature. That's right. We're talking four movies in one complete episode. I've done it before, and I'm gonna do it again. Today we're gonna be covering Toy Story 5, Scary Movie, The Breadwinner, and Masters of the Universe. It's a pretty crazy lineup. But we've got toys, we've got horror parody, we've got family comedy, and of course, we've got He-Man. This episode kind of feels like somebody picked movies by throwing darts at a wall, but I'm actually using a movie list that I'm going to be using to go see these movies in theaters. So let's jump right in.

Toy Story 5 With Anna

SPEAKER_00 1:30

So my wife and daughter went to go see Toy Story 5. And I actually have a special guest here with me. It is actually my daughter.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

So can I say hi?

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Yeah, you can say hi.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Hi.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

That is my beautiful girl. It was just her birthday, and so we decided to take her to a movie. And so I thought I'd have her on the episode to talk about it for a little bit. So, Anna, how are you doing? Good. So, what was your favorite part of Toy Story 5? What do you think? What was your favorite part? What did you like about it? What was the funny part?

SPEAKER_02 2:06

I don't remember.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

You don't remember? Okay, well, what about what about the the Lilipad character? Do you remember that character?

SPEAKER_02 2:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

What did you like about that character? What did you say you did? She did turn so there is gonna be spoilers. We're gonna spoil this movie. So Lillipad originally was a bad character, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

But then she decided to do what? What did she decide to do?

SPEAKER_02 2:31

Help.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

She decided to help. Help the little girl. And who is the cowgirl? What's the cowgirl's name? You remember?

SPEAKER_02 2:37

All I name, all I remember is the horse. Bullseye.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Bullseye, yeah. There's a lot of horses in this movie, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

What what did Buzz Lightyear ride on?

SPEAKER_02 2:50

A unicorn.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

He was riding on a unicorn.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

He was riding on unicorns.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

That's right. So did you like this movie?

SPEAKER_02 2:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Yeah, I think this is this is obviously the fifth movie in the Toy Story franchise. And when people first heard about that they were making a fourth one, people were kind of worried because the fourth one wasn't that great. That was the one with Bo Peep and Woody and the I love that one. Well, see, my daughter liked all of them, so we watched all of them. We kind of re refreshed ourselves and watched all four Toy Story movies.

SPEAKER_02 3:24

And then we go to the movie feeder.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Yeah. And we got popcorn and we got a drink. And what kind of candy did you get?

SPEAKER_02 3:32

Sour worms.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

Sour worms.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

And they were fruit flavors.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

They were fruit flavors. And she did a really good job sitting still. Not really, she whispered a couple of times, but she sat really still. And

Snacks And Theater Etiquette

SPEAKER_00 3:44

there were people in front of us that had smaller children, and they were not very quiet, were they?

SPEAKER_02 3:49

No, no.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

No, not at all. And I actually found myself getting kind of frustrated at times because if you know me, I teach theater, and so I'm a big advocate for theater etiquette, mean which means knowing how to be quiet in a movie theater. And Anna, you did a great job.

SPEAKER_02 4:07

Thank you. You're welcome.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

So, Anna, if you had to give this movie, Toy Story Five, a rating. So a one means it's really, really bad, and a five means it's really, really good. What would you give Toy Story Five? She's holding up five fingers. My daughter gives it a perfect five out of five. I would actually give it like a 4.5. And again, I don't know why I'm not giving it a five. I do think it's a really good movie. I think if they continue to have really good stories to tell, they should make more of these because these are fun characters. It was very heartwarming.

Heart And Bullying Themes

SPEAKER_00 4:40

It really dove into how mean kids can be because the kids were really mean to Bonnie, weren't they, Anna?

SPEAKER_02 4:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Yeah. And they use the device to bully, and that's just stuff that kids deal with nowadays. And as a father myself to my beautiful girl and my awesome son, these are things that I'm gonna have to deal with. People being mean because we don't live in a perfect world. And she's giving me a hug because I just love her and she loves me. So Toy Story Five, I highly recommend it. I think give it a chance. If you didn't like the fourth one, it's okay. I think this one's better than the fourth one. I just had a lot of fun with it, and I love that it was my daughter's first movie theater experience. So those are my thoughts on Toy Story Five. All right, so from Pixar Emotions and Nostalgia to whatever this next movie was. That's right,

Scary Movie Falls Flat

SPEAKER_00 5:28

we're gonna be talking about scary movie. Now I know the scary movie franchise is a big fan base, and I know that a lot of people quote these movies, and I know nostalgia is very powerful, but I'm just gonna be honest about this movie. I did not laugh one time, like at all. Maybe one little chuckle at the end because I did think the ending was kind of interesting, a nice twist. But other than that, it's it's very bad. I mean, obviously, these movies pull from Scream, and I know if you did last summer, and putting some somewhat quote unquote humor in it. And I understand that that's some people's thing, but to me, it just felt really lazy and none of it worked for me. A lot of the jokes boiled down to look how ridiculous this is, and it's not even funny anymore. Some of the jokes are extremely dated and it doesn't work. There's no brilliant setup, there's just loud chaos, and it's not funny. And I'm someone who actually enjoys a good dumb comedy. Like one of my favorite movies of all time is actually Dumb and Dumber with Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels. So I'm I'm someone who likes the dumb comedies, but there's a difference between smart dumb and just dumb, like the movie Airplane and the Naked Gun franchise. Those are ridiculous, but at least they're well crafted, they're well done. And it's because of the acting, it's because of the writing. And this one just seems like a bunch of random sketch ideas thrown in a blender and they're not funny. It's kind of like modern day Saturday Night Live. It's not funny anymore. And like I said, a lot of the humor doesn't make sense anymore. It just some of the jokes felt mean and they felt awkward, and it just it didn't, it didn't work for me. I I kept waiting for the movie to click, but it just never did. And maybe it's because I'm not the kind of person who has seen every single scary movie, and so that's why this movie probably didn't connect with me that much because I didn't really care about the characters, and so this movie was just rough for me. So I'm gonna go ahead and make this a short but sweet to the point of 1.5 out of five. So cinema Sundays will still be out of five stars, and then the Pokemon reviews will be out of six Pokeballs. But if you love the movie, I'm not gonna judge it too harshly, but for me, it was just a big, big mess. And so from scary movie, we go from a movie that I kind of respected more than I enjoyed. It's

The Breadwinner Clean Comedy Test

SPEAKER_00 7:46

the movie Breadwinner. Now, this movie stars, I'm gonna probably say his name wrong. It stars the comedian Nate Bargats. Bargates, Bargate. He's a guy who's been facing kind of some controversy lately because he went to the UFC fight at the White House and got a picture with RFK Jr. for some reason. But this guy's comedy is clean and it's relatable that makes every day's stories hilarious. It's kind of like Brian Regan. If you've never you've never heard of Brian Regan, I 100% recommend you go watch his stand-up comedy. He's also a clean comedian, and I think he he is hilarious. So I had high hopes for the breadwinner because I'm a guy who likes to support clean comedy. The premise is pretty simple. Nate plays a husband and a father who whose wife gets a huge opportunity, which leaves him to handle life as a stay-at-home dad. And I will say this about this movie: there were some cute moments, and I'm a sucker for a movie with a good family dynamic. And some of the parenting chaos that went on kind of felt relatable to me because I am a dad now and I know what dad life can be like with kids. And there were scenes that actually made me smile because they felt relatable. And Nate, as a character and as a person, just from observations and based on you know his comedy routines and stuff, he seems like a likable guy, which helps a lot because you're supposed to like the characters. And the script wasn't great, but at least he made it somewhat easy to watch. But I kind of prefaced this already. This movie didn't really do much for me. And it's because it wasn't as funny as I thought it was going to be, especially since your cut your your lead character is a real life comedian, and I was waiting for those laugh out loud moments, and they never really came for me. I I feel like he didn't want to push the envelope too much. And I'm not saying he had to be crass or do anything like that, but it really did feel like he was being really, I guess the word I would use was is safe with the humor. It seemed pretty predictable. It seemed like something I had seen before. And so you you obviously can see where everything's headed. And while the movie did have some heart, like I said before, I did like some aspects of it. It never really made me connect emotionally or even comedically. And again, the guy's a comedian, and it was it, like I said, it wasn't really that funny to me. But it's not a bad movie. I'm not saying I hated it or anything like that. There were those sweet moments, but as a whole, it feels like a decent idea that never really becomes a great movie. And especially towards the end when Nate gets into all these chaotic situations, but somehow everything works out. And I walked away from this movie thinking it was okay. It was not really memorable, not really terrible. It was just okay, which you know, I guess it's okay to see a movie that's okay sometimes. So I would actually give the breadwinner a 2.5 out of five because it did have cute moments. The cast was pretty good, but overall it wasn't that great. So so far, we've had toys, we've had a parody horror, and we've had family comedy. And now it's time for the big finale.

Masters Of The Universe Identity Debate

SPEAKER_00 10:56

And I'm joined by two really good friends of mine. One you've heard on the show before, and another one he has never been on the show before. I'm really excited to talk to JP and Red about Masters of the Universe. Or at least I thought I was going to be talking to JP and Red, but unfortunately, they could not make the Zoom call while I was recording. So I'll be talking about Masters of the Universe all by myself. That's okay. I'm used to doing this. At least I was able to record a little bit with my daughter, talk about Toy Story 5. The Masters of the Universe is based on the Mattel line of toys, He-Man, She-Ra, Skeletor, all that classic like 80s, 70s cartoons. There was a Dolph Logner movie starring Dolph Logner as He-Man. And so He-Man's been around for a while. One thing I was worried about this movie, and it kind of was confirmed when I went to go see it, is that they were going to try to make He-Man less of He-Man, kind of in the vein of what they did with the Barbie movie, and you know, trying to have a social commentary message with it. And that's kind of what they did with He-Man. Were there awesome fight scenes? Yes, there were. Was Skeletor cool? I believe yes, he was. Jared Leto did not disappoint as Skeletor. I know a lot of people were worried about it because Jared Leto has kind of been kind of a letdown when it comes to movies lately. A lot of his movies have bombed at the box office. Unfortunately, the trend continues, but not because of Jared Leto, in my opinion. But he-Man has not done that well in the box office either. But Amazon has already said that no matter what the box office says, they will still do a sequel because they do hint at a sequel at the end of the movie. But talking about the movie itself, I thought for the most part it was a fun time. It was a fun time, good action flick. I do think they kind of de-he-manned he-man a little bit by trying to make him kind of more sympathetic and empathetic and sensitive and talking about his feelings and all these things. And I'm not saying it's wrong for men to do that, but you got this character that's known for just being all strength and all just fighting all the time. And the big thing about He-Man is that when he's Adam, he's more, shall I say, feminine and very anxious and nervous and not what you think a strong, confident, strong man would be. And then when he gets the sword and he says, I have the power, that's when he becomes He-Man and he's super buffed and he talks like this, I'm He-Man. And he's just a completely different person. Well, in this movie, they didn't really do that. Even when he became He-Man, he still just came off as Adam a little bit. I don't know. I think they were trying to play it safe and they didn't want to be, you know, toxic masculinity with He-Man and all this whatever. So to me, they kind of missed what made He-Man He-Man, and that he's kind of a split personality, kind of Jekyll Hyde, but the positive version of Jekyll and Hyde. And I kind of think they missed that a little bit. And the whole of the whole thing of them doing that kind of confuses the message of the movie. On one hand, they're saying that you know the muscles don't make the man and he doesn't need the sword to wield the power, but yet when he's fighting Skeletor and spoiler alert, the sword breaks. He he has to have the sword come back together so he can do this epic battle with Skeletor. But they just finished saying that he doesn't need the sword because it broke, and he was devastated that the sword broke. And then the four the the whatever lady said, You silly man, you don't need the sword for the power. The power has always been inside of you from that kind of mumbo jumbo. But it was and which I would have been fine with if he didn't end up having the sword again, anyway. I'm like, Well, does he need the sword or does he not need the sword? And but again, all the negative things said about it. I thought they did a really good job at still having some of the feeling of the cartoon, especially towards the end when someone says something funny and all the characters just bend kind of back and ha ha ha ha ha. Kind of like the old cartoon at the end of every episode, it would have some something funny said, and all the characters would feel the need to laugh just in unison. So there were those nice funny homages, but for the most part, it just came off as you know, they're trying to make trying to send a message, but the message was confusing, and yeah, but Skeletor was cool. I thought they did Skeletor really well. And I was telling JP, who I did go see this movie with, that the whole time I'm I'm thinking, Man, I wish it would just have been like just He-Man and Skeletor the entire movie because when they were together, it was cool, and then they would go to like the lesser cared about characters, and it was not as cool. So, all that to say, I enjoyed it, but I wish it had been just a little bit more he-man than it was. So I'm gonna give Masters of the Universe a three out of five, and that is Toy Story Five, Scary Movie, The Breadwinner, and Masters of the Universe.

Final Scores And Next Week Tease

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Next week, I'm gonna be talking about another Pokemon movie, and it is Pokemon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea. I've never seen this movie, it's slightly higher up the list, so hopefully it's a little bit better than what I've seen. We shall see next Sunday on The Couch Critics, where every movie gets its close-up.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

It's time of Sunday with a stuff begins. The couch critics who's got that stuff.