I give Pixar a lot of passes. When the company is at its best, like with the first three Toy Story movies, Up, and Finding Nemo among others, are modern animated classics. But of late, many of their movies have felt a bit subpar. True, they can still knock out a Soul or an Inside Out or something along those lines, but there are too many that are, at best, pleasant diversions. I would argue there’s a lot of value to some of their recent output, like Turning Red and Luca as smaller and more personal sort of movies, but then there’s Lightyear, a movie that is not a sequel or a prequel to Toy Story, but something of a weird spin-off.
So, what does that say about the company? Should I just wait for Elemental to see if they can get something good out again or will Lightyear exceed my admittedly low expectations?
After a title card that explains that Andy from the Toy Story movies got a Buzz Lightyear action figure because it was a character from his favorite movie and the audience is about to see said movie, the movie reveals that Buzz was part of some sort of space exploration mission that opted to divert course from their trip home, a decision made by Buzz (voice of Chris Evans) himself, a series of accidents strands the ship on this unknown planet with no fuel to lift off again. Sure, Buzz’s commanding officer and best friend Commander Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba) doesn’t blame Buzz, a man who doesn’t like having to rely on others if he doesn’t have to, but there may be hope if the crew of the vessel can find a new fuel source that can hit hyperspace. Buzz, as a pilot, volunteers to fly the missions, but there’s a hitch: every time he fails, due to getting closer to the speed of light, time passes more slowly for him relative to the planet where the rest of his crew is. Basically, he skips forward four years with every failure. He gets to see people aging whenever he comes back from a four minute trip, and his only constant companion is a robotic cat named Sox (Peter Sohn).
However, when one last attempt comes along, there’s a problem in that Buzz’s new commander (Isiah Whitlock Jr) puts an end to Buzz’s flights in favor of just staying put where they are. Buzz can’t accept that, so he and Sox make one last attempt, coming back after another time jump to see the settlement under attack by a series of robots controlled by a large spaceship under the command of someone who may be named Zurg (James Brolin). Buzz may be able to save the day, but he won’t have much in the way of help. All he has is Sox, Hawkthorne’s now-adult granddaughter Izzy (Keke Palmer), elderly parolee Darby (Dale Soules), and cowardly wannabe quitter Mo (Taika Waititi). Will they be enough, and can Buzz even admit he needs help?
Well, that’s…fine I suppose. It’s a fairly standard, run-of-the-mill story. I didn’t see any real breakthroughs in the animation. It’s Pixar, so it isn’t bad, but I didn’t really see anything new here. There was some nice work done with Zurg’s backstory, but beyond that, it wasn’t all that groundbreaking in terms of story or anything. This is supposed to be Andy’s favorite movie? Even taking into account he was a kid, with a kid’s taste, it doesn’t seem all that special. Is there no Star Wars or Matrix movies in the Toy Story universe?
It doesn’t help that Buzz himself is kind of a bland character. Evans is a talented actor, but the script doesn’t make Buzz much beyond the straight hero type, missing all the self-importance of the action figure version. Yeah, they don’t have to be the same person, but it makes this Buzz less memorable than that Buzz. How this character became one of Andy’s heroes I can’t say. He’s the least interesting character in the movie. I would think Sox would have been the hot toy on the market, but what do I know? Anyway, there wasn’t much here that needs to be seen anytime soon. You’re best off waiting for this one to hit streaming. And how this was the first Pixar movie to go back to theaters, I’m not sure. I’m sure Disney had confidence in the movie’s connections to the popular Toy Story movies, but really, this one could have gone straight to streaming, and everyone would have been just fine as a result.
Grade: C
Post Script: So, I got to think a bit about whether or not Disney has finally surpassed Pixar in terms of creativity and the overall quality of their animated features. I’ve been reluctant to say so because Pixar’s catalog as a whole is still, in my opinion, superior to even Disney’s best recent movies. But of late, even though I would argue the last three Disney animated features all had more or less the same plot–young woman finds a way to save her family and greater community by utilizing love and acceptance even of one’s enemies even if that is a bit of a stretch for Encanto–they still were far more engaging and creative than a good 75% or so of the most recent Pixar movies. So, yeah, much as I have a longstanding anti-Disney sentiment going back to my childhood that Disney is too “nice,” they’ve been really knocking it out of the park so consistently of late, that yeah, they are the current gold standard for animated features once again.
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