10 Best Joan Cusack Movies to Watch Before (and After) Toy Story 5

Toy Story 5 opens in theaters on June 19, 2026. Tim Allen says the film is "a lot about Jessie." Here's why that's the best news Joan Cusack fans have heard in decades.

Why Is Toy Story 5 Joan Cusack's Biggest Moment?

There's a line Tim Allen gave in a Toy Story 5 press interview that most people skimmed past: "It's a lot about Jessie." As in Joan Cusack's Jessie. As in the cowgirl who has been the emotional core of the Toy Story franchise since her gut-punch debut in Toy Story 2 — and who, for six films' worth of conversation about Tom Hanks and Woody and the whole gang, has been quietly excellent in the margins.

Not anymore. Toy Story 5, which opens today, June 19, 2026, places Jessie at the center of a story about Bonnie, her toys, and a new digital interloper — a "toy tablet" that starts pulling kids away from physical play. Critics have responded with the franchise's strongest reviews in years: a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, with The Hollywood Reporter specifically calling out Cusack's Jessie for carrying the film's emotional weight.

Pixar projections have Toy Story 5 tracking for a $150 million-plus opening weekend — a franchise record. For Joan Cusack, it's the biggest spotlight of a career that has been undersold for 40 years.

This is the piece that fixes that.

What Are Joan Cusack's 10 Best Movies?

Cusack has two Oscar nominations, an Emmy win, and a filmography that stretches from mid-'80s ensemble comedies to 2020s drama. She has a rare gift: she makes every scene funnier and more alive without seeming to try. These ten movies prove it.

10. The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

A darker, more restrained Cusack than you usually get. In Stephen Chbosky's adaptation of his own novel, she brings a quiet warmth to a film that needed exactly that — a steady adult presence in a story about teenagers figuring out survival. It's not a showy role. That's the point. The fact that she holds the film's emotional center without ever demanding attention for it is exactly the kind of underrated work that defines her career.

9. High Fidelity (2000)

A brief part in a great film, but the Cusack family connection makes it unmissable: this is Joan and John working in the same Chicago orbit, playing off the same deadpan rhythms they've clearly been refining since childhood. Her scenes as a sharp, no-nonsense presence in John's romantic-comedy spiral are short and perfectly executed. High Fidelity is one of the best films of the 2000s, and she made it slightly better by showing up.

8. Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)

If you've only seen Joan Cusack in family films, Grosse Pointe Blank will recalibrate everything. She plays Marcella, the deadpan assistant to John Cusack's professional hitman — and she is absolutely hilarious. Her comedic timing in this black comedy is a masterclass in understatement: every line delivered like she's reading a grocery list, every absurdist situation treated with total calm. The sibling chemistry between Joan and John Cusack is so natural and so funny that you'd watch a whole separate film about these two characters.

7. Broadcast News (1987)

This is where it all started. James L. Brooks' acclaimed newsroom comedy-drama gave Joan Cusack her first real national spotlight, and she used every second of it. She plays a production assistant in a D.C. TV newsroom, and in a film anchored by Holly Hunter, William Hurt, and Albert Brooks, Cusack carved out enough space to get noticed. She'd be Oscar-nominated for her very next film. Broadcast News is the reason.

6. Toy Story 3 (2010)

The one where Pixar made an entire generation of adults cry in a movie theater. Toy Story 3 isn't just a great animated sequel — it might be the most emotionally sophisticated film in the franchise. Jessie's arc in this one is her most complex: a toy who has been abandoned before, who has learned to survive endings, and who faces the most terrifying one yet. Cusack brings so much texture to the performance that you forget you're listening to voice work. The incinerator sequence is one of the most harrowing things Pixar has ever committed to film.

5. In & Out (1997)

Her second Oscar nomination, and arguably the funnier of the two. Cusack plays Emily Montgomery, the fiancée of a small-town English teacher (Kevin Kline) who gets outed as gay on national television the night before their wedding. In lesser hands, Emily could have been a one-note casualty of someone else's story. Cusack makes her a full person — furious, wounded, funny, and ultimately dignified. The scene where she processes the news in real time is a comic performance masterclass. She lost the Oscar to Kim Basinger. That's still a crime.

4. Toy Story 2 (1999)

The one that introduced Jessie to the world — and the one that made Joan Cusack a household name for a generation of kids who had no idea what she looked like. The "When She Loved Me" sequence, scored by Randy Newman and tracking Jessie's memory of being loved and then left behind, is one of the most devastating two minutes in the history of animated film. Cusack doesn't just voice the flashback — she carries the whole emotional logic of the sequence. Toy Story 2 was the film that told you Jessie wasn't a sidekick. She was a lead waiting for the right story.

That story arrives in Toy Story 5.

3. Addams Family Values (1993)

The best villain in a film franchise that's had some excellent ones. Cusack plays Debbie Jellinsky, the black widow nanny who targets Gomez and Morticia's newborn son (and then Uncle Fester) in a scheme of cheerful, elaborately explained murder. She is magnificent. Debbie is the rare movie villain who tells you exactly what she wants, why she wants it, and why she blames you personally for all of it — and Cusack delivers the whole package with the gleeful commitment the role demands. The "Barbie" monologue is among the great comedic villain speeches in modern film. Don't argue.

2. School of Rock (2003)

The perfect comic foil to one of Jack Black's best performances. Principal Rosalie Mullins is wound tight, rule-driven, and terrified that the substitute teacher she improbably hired (Jack Black's Dewey Finn, posing as his roommate) is doing something deeply wrong with her students. She is absolutely correct. Cusack's performance works because she plays Mullins with complete sincerity — no winks to the audience, no acknowledgment that she's in a comedy. Every laugh she generates comes from Mullins being exactly who she is. The musical number she gets at the end might be the most purely delightful 90 seconds of her entire career.

1. Working Girl (1988)

The one that almost made history. Working Girl earned Cusack her first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, playing Cynthia — called "Cyn" — the Staten Island best friend of Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith). On paper, it's a supporting role in a film about someone else's corporate ambition. On screen, Cusack nearly walks off with the entire movie.

The secret is that Cyn is everything the film's other women aren't: honest, unguarded, and completely comfortable with exactly who she is. She's working-class and proud of it. She's loyal without being a pushover. She is funny in the specific way of someone who has no patience for pretension. In a film loaded with performances — Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver, Melanie Griffith — Joan Cusack's work as Cyn still lands fresh every time you watch it.

Working Girl is where she announced herself as the real thing. Toy Story 5 is where she gets to prove she still is.

Where Does Toy Story 5 Fit in Joan Cusack's Career?

Here's the honest answer: it's probably the best thing that has ever happened to her publicly.

Cusack is notoriously private. She made news in 2026 when she appeared on the Toy Story 5 red carpet for the first time in over a decade — a signal of how much this film means to her. Tim Allen's comment that the film "is a lot about Jessie" wasn't just a promotional quote. It's a description of what Pixar actually built.

Toy Story 5 is a film about a toy who has survived being left behind, learned to love again, and now faces a new challenge: what happens when the kids she loves get pulled away not by growing up, but by a screen? It's Pixar doing what it does best — wrapping a very real anxiety (screen time, the disappearing of physical play) in the emotional language of toys. And Jessie, who has always been the franchise's most resilient character, is the right vehicle for it.

Whether Toy Story 5 ends up being the definitive Joan Cusack performance is an argument for later this summer. As of today, the 94% Rotten Tomatoes score and franchise-record opening projections suggest it might be.

How to Watch Toy Story 5 in Spanish at the Theater

Toy Story 5 is available with Spanish audio at participating theaters through the TheaterEars app. If you'd rather watch Jessie's story fully dubbed in Spanish, here's how it works: download the free TheaterEars app before your showtime, sync it to the film when you arrive, and listen through your own earbuds. The Spanish audio plays in sync with the screen throughout the entire film — no subtitles, no workarounds.

TheaterEars works across most major theater chains in North America. It's free to download, and it turns almost any showtime into a Spanish-language screening. You can find it and learn more at theaterears.com.