Lightyear

This is a funny spinoff with suspense and heart, a captivatingly spirited toon take on splashy live-action retro popcorn entertainment. The title character is given splendid voice by Chris Evans, balancing heroism and human fallibility with infectious warmth.

One side effect of a tagalong project like Lightyear is that even while the movie is rightly being shrugged off as another reheat, moments of real artistry will get overlooked. The animation in this Toy Story-adjacent adventure is astounding; with each new movie, the studio advances the art form in incremental ways.

It’s nice to know that Team Pixar can still recognize the importance of fun. Though Lightyear isn’t as funny as the original “Toy Story,” nor as emotionally potent as “Toy Story 2,” and hence probably won’t be rewatched nearly as many times as those two classics, it’s a plucky and rousing little sci-fi saga.

Had there been more to Lightyear than a retread of sci-fi cliches with a beloved character, I would have been less disappointed.

Following Pixar’s two most refreshing releases in years, “Luca” and “Turning Red,” both of which were deemed unworthy of a full theatrical release, it’s difficult not to perceive “Lightyear” as a far less compelling and safe bet. How tiresome it is that most studio productions must now exist as part of a larger multiverse in order to merit exposure. In the end, “Lightyear” reveals that today, given Disney’s business model, “to infinity and beyond” really only means to the inevitable sequel.

Rather than play like a significant departure from the “Toy Story” films that spawned it, Lightyear instead emerges as a disappointing runner-up, capturing but a fraction of the comedy, thrills and poignancy of its predecessors.

For perhaps the first time in the studio’s canon, every idea in this ‘origin story’ of the Toy Story astronaut feels woefully half-baked.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

A visually polished and intermittently thrilling sci-fi adventure that expands Buzz’s mythology with ambition and heart, yet struggles to balance its surprisingly somber themes with the lighter charm audiences might expect.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Based on the description in the opening, there is no way a 6 or 7-year-old Andy in 1995 would be watching this woke space ranger movie with a lesbian couple in it and become obsessed with Buzz Lightyear, i don't even believe this type of movie exist back then, it has none of the charm, fun, adventure, or excitement that made Buzz such an iconic character in the Toy Story world. I know this is supposed to be its own thing, separate from Toy Story, but at least make me excited, instead, it's filled with woke storylines and a silly, nonsensical mission that never becomes interesting. "You'll be back in a year or two," says Alisha, Buzz's best friend, as Buzz keeps failing the mission over and over again, after what feels like the 500th attempt, she simply moves on with her life, grows old, and eventually dies while Buzz is still trying to solve the same problem, then, after all that buildup, a robotic cat figures out the solution, it's stupid, the entire mission feels pointless and completely unexciting. The voice acting isn't bad, but it's nothing special either, it's decent at best, the new Space Ranger team doesn't work for me too, most of them are forgettable and nowhere near as interesting as the movie thinks they are. Other than Pixar's beautiful and great animation, which is pretty much the only thing carrying this movie, and a few decent moments here and there, Lightyear is quite trash, the story is messy, the characters are weak, and the adventure lacks the excitement and wonder that a Buzz Lightyear movie should have had. This doesn't feel like the movie that inspired Andy's favorite toy, it feels like a completely different movie wearing Buzz Lightyear's name, in the end, Lightyear is one of the silliest and most disappointing spin-offs i've ever seen, and a clear example of a franchise losing sight of what made people love it in the first place.

First the purely awful - woke Disney at its finest here. A black, lesbian giving birth to a child with no father even in the movie, IN SPACE? LOL. What a complete joke. They seriously had to include this smut into a Toy Story spinoff flick? Not cool, Disney. Not cool. If you think your woke crap is actually fun to watch, it isn't. The movie itself is enjoyable for one watch, but it's pretty underwhelming for Disney/Pixar. Maybe if they didn't focus so much on woke crap then they would have made another great film, but nooooo. We have to have wokeism here. What does stand out as superb is in the 4k version. The colors are absolutely beautiful on a nice OLED screen, and the HDR/lighting/contrast is just amazing. Disney/Pixar films do look incredible in 4k on a OLED (not a regular 4k LED). If you can get past the woke crap in this movie there is a decent film to be had, but you'll probably not watch it ever again. 6.5 for the movie, 0 for the woke filth smut that exists here. Averages out to be a 3.25