Lightyear - Movie Review

Critics Score - 4 of 10

General Audience Score - 5 of 10

Kids Score - 6 of 10

The Toy Story franchise has long been the baby of the leading animation studio, Pixar. Despite it’s four installments, you can feel the tender loving care that the studio has poured into each film, not allowing the franchise to become another cash grabbing arm of the Disney machine. But now the studio is releasing a prequel of sorts, Lightyear, a film that it explains is six year old Andy’s favorite movie from the first film. The reason Andy is so excited about the Buzz Lightyear toy he gets for his birthday stems from his love of this film. The beating heart of the Toy Story franchise has always been the characters, the journeys they go on together as well as the lessons and arcs the main characters experience. The beating heart of Lightyear is the action sequences the film incessantly throws at you in hopes of keeping you engaged. While kids can have a fine enough of a time, for many parents and critics looking for something more, the charm, humor and character development the franchise has offered us before may feel like a Lightyear away.

SYNOPSIS - Our introduction to the Space Ranger core plays out like the first ten minutes of Alien. Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Chris Evans) provides the opening exposition that “sensors have detected potential life forms on an uncharted planet, so we’re making a detour to investigate.” But upon his exploration with his fellow Ranger Hawthorne (Uzo Abuda), we discover Buzz is a do it yourself kinda guy. When Hawthorne reminds Buzz they forgot to bring the rookie, he expresses disgust with newbies and autopilots, saying “I’m better off just doing the job myself.” The screenplay has Buzz following the same type of character arc that another recent animated feature The Lego Batman did, the do it on your own, I don’t need any help, hero trope. Only problem is, by comparison, Lightyear does it in a mostly uninteresting and unfunny way. *Spoiler Alert* Buzz does learn his lessons towards the finale, but Evans line reading of “I can’t do it alone, I need you”, feels hollow. The voiceover work of Evans is nothing more than average and certainly doesn’t do the character justice in the same way that Tim Allen was able to inject life, humor and humanity into this character through the Toy Story series. The film chose to play the character straight, unlike the Spanish speaking, salsa dancing Buzz from Toy Story 3 that was a complete riot, this Buzz is a droll, paint by the numbers character that offers virtually no quippy one liners or much personality of any kind. The Lego Batman sold us the same story and character arc, only it stuck the landing far better and with far more nuance and emotional resonance. Eventually, some vine creatures begin attacking Buzz and Co., they make it back to the ship but they end up crashing while trying to escape and become stranded on the alien planet.

Buzz and Hawthorne go to work at developing some sort of power crystal to get their root vegetable shaped space-craft back on track. But Buzz must test the power hyperdrive on a single fighter jet style aircraft, but with every test and failure, four years pass for his comrades back on the alien planet whereas he only ages a handful of minutes. Before long, all the people he’s ever known have died and he must fight the new powers that be to continue the Space Ranger project. After awhile, it begins to feel like the screenwriters started throwing in contrived problems, almost every aspect of the film and subsequently the screenplay feels shallow. Little side mission after side mission, one orchestrated problem after another, the film plays like three mid-season episodes of any Disney+ show stitched together. Eventually Buzz Lightyear’s arch enemy Zurg appears and the first signs of animated creativity show up, to an interesting animated claymation hybrid. But as finale builds, without laying much of any groundwork for character development other than the couple of lines about Buzz preferring to work solo, any climactic ending is null and void. It felt to me like they’re doing stuff, doing more stuff, then the film ends. Any moments of quiet and meaningful reflection for Buzz are wasted and quickly moved away from.

Once we’ve been to infinity and beyond, we’re left perplexed as to why Andy’s favorite film was Lightyear and why Buzz was such a sought after toy. Pretty much all the other side characters had more personality than Buzz. Taika Waititi as Mo Morrison is a delightful side character and the adorable animated robot cat SOX (Peter Sohn) will sell a million stuffed animals at various stores and Disney Parks. Why didn’t Andy want a Sox toy? Toys aside, there were many plot holes and inconsistencies within the story. After surviving countless flights, crashes and disasters, the cat Sox falls off a counter and needs to be reboot. Despite a whole human civilization working, building and surviving while stranded on this alien planet of death vines, it’s the robot cat that figures out the right combination of elements to make the hyperdrive work. Getting to the actual animation from Pixar, it was perfectly serviceable, yet not much stood out other than the series of flights Buzz makes around a sun. The original score was tepid and uninspired work, which was utterly surprising considering Michael Giacchino has given us so many fantastic original scores like Pixar’s Up. With Lightyear is seems like his originality was completely tapped out from earlier this year with his incredible work on The Batman score. At the end of the day, this film is such a step below the rest of the Toy Story franchise, it’s difficult to see the good elements in Lightyear (there are a few), when you’re standing in the presence of greatness.

SUMMARY - Younger kids will enjoy the animated cat Sox, older kids will have a decent enough time with the many action sequences, the film rolls from one right into the next. But lovers of the Toy Story franchise that grew up watching Buzz and Woody interacting on the screen are bound to be let down by this origin story of Lightyear.