‘Lightyear’ Review: To Mediocrity and Beyond
A Totally Reel Movie Review
Rate It Out of Eight
3/8
If I’m being 100% honest, Lightyear doesn’t even reach mediocre. It’s an adventure movie set in space that’s clearly meant for younger audiences, such as Andy from the Toy Story movies. Unless you’re Andy’s age, I doubt you’ll find much to salvage. Lightyear was supposed to be Pixar’s big comeback to theatrical releases but this movie should’ve gone straight to streaming. It’s not doing so hot in box offices this long weekend and I have no doubt it’s only downhill from here. We’ve known for years now that Disney is shifting focus from original stories to quick, nostalgia-fueled cash grabs like the endless live action remakes that fail to capture the magic of the original. The same goes for Lightyear.
For those who aren’t familiar, Lightyear features Buzz Lightyear as an astronaut, not as a toy. The Buzz Lightyear toy was based off a movie that Andy loved and Lightyear (2022) is that movie. It’s exactly the kind of movie that little Andy would like, which is to say, unless you have kids or young siblings to see the movie with, please save your time and money and skip this one. The plot is truly a series of unfortunate mistakes that could have been easily avoided had the characters been less careless. In many ways, Lightyear is a watered-down, kid-friendly combination of Top Gun and Interstellar. Buzz has many of Maverick’s independent, rules-don’t-apply-to-me traits and goes through similar development where he learns the value of teamwork. As far as Interstellar, there is a sequence in the beginning where time in outer space moves differently than time on a planet. However, that sequence fails to move audiences emotionally and is only there to move the plot along. My favorite part of the film is the AI sidekick cat Sox. You know it’s bad when a cat is the sole highlight of the movie.
Merry Band of (Uninteresting) Misfits
Besides Buzz Lightyear, the movie is centered around a group of 3 barely-trained misfits who are thrown into this adventure. One of them is an elderly convict, another is the granddaughter of Buzz’s dear friend, and the last is… well he’s never really fleshed out as a character. He stumbled on the adventure because he thought it would be a fun boot camp workout.
All of the characters are rather forgettable and often outshined by Sox the Cat. During the long 105 minutes, Sox was often the only entertainment that kept me awake. He’s cute, he’s smart, and he’s much funnier than any of the live, human characters. This says more about the poor writing than it does about the sophistication of AI technology. Why this movie couldn’t be condensed into 90 minutes is a mystery. Personally I’m against all the action movies nowadays running into 2 hours, 2.5 hours (looking at you Jurassic World Dominion), or even 3 hours. A good movie and good writing should be able to tell a story in 90 minutes. There’s hardly much story here to fill up 90, not to mention 105, minutes.
Buzz Lightyear as a character isn’t exempt from boring writing. He doesn’t have much of a personality other than being overly confident and arrogant. It’s those exact traits that led to the domino of events in the exposition of the movie. His immense guilt and need to correct his wrongs drives most of the plot. In the beginning of the movie, he treated rookies with barely disguised disdain, preferring to do things on his own. When Buzz later has to team up with the band of misfits, he similarly dismisses them for their lack of training. At one point, Izzy Hawthorne (the granddaughter of Buzz’s friend) tells him that they don’t need him to be a savior, they just need him to be a teammate. Like Maverick in Top Gun, Buzz learns to trust and rely on others to succeed.
“You don’t need to save us, you need to join us”
None of the characters have distinct personality traits other than pressure to live up to expectations (Izzy) or arrogance and overconfidence (Buzz). Sox was my favorite character because he was absolutely adorable and had some great one-liners. After Buzz takes Sox to test launch the fuel cell in his ship, Sox says “Buzz, that was utterly terrifying, and I regret having joined you” in a deadpan, robotic voice. Somehow it works and Sox continues to be the only comedic relief I enjoyed. A lot of the comedy is eyeroll-inducing, clearly aimed at kids.
A Mediocre Plot Fit that Wows No One (Spoilers Ahead)
The plot leaves a lot to be desired. Because of Buzz’s mistake in the beginning of the movie, a lot of space rangers are stranded on an uncharted island. He tries to recreate a fuel cell that can help the ship escape this planet. During every test mission, only 4 minutes pass for him but 4 years pass on the planet. As a result, we see a montage of his best friend Alisha Hawthorne age, marry, and have kids in the span of minutes. This is very much the same montage that Up has at the beginning of the movie, but the viewer is not invested enough in any of the characters for it to have the same effect. Because we’re watching Alisha fall in love with someone else and living her life without Buzz (he only shows up every 4 years in her life), the viewer is watching from Buzz’s perspective — an occasional passerby in her life.
Once Buzz has finally figured out the fuel cell (or rather Sox the AI cat did), he has to evade capture by the evil Zurg (who we’ll remember from Toy Story 2). Eventually he is captured and we find out that Zurg, rather than being Buzz’s father, is Buzz himself. Zurg/Buzz figured out the fuel cell but never met the merry band of misfits, was captured by the authorities on the planet, and became bitter. He uses the fuel cell to travel back in time to present day (where Buzz meets the misfits) and wants to steal Present Buzz’s fuel cell to go back further in time and prevent the ship from ever being stranded. In the meantime, he doesn’t care what damage that creates or what lives would be erased (including Izzy Hawthorne).
Eventually, Zurg/Buzz is defeated and the misfits and Buzz all live happily ever after on the uncharted planet. Buzz is convinced to just settle down instead of returning back to Earth. It’s hard to believe after spending the entire movie trying to return everyone to Earth, he would just give up because Izzy told him that they all have lives on the new planet and are happy to be there.
Pixar’s Lackluster Theatrical Comeback
As I’ve said many times before, this movie is fun to watch with kids, but not worth the price of admissions otherwise. Just skip it and wait until it comes to Disney Plus in a few months. I didn’t particularly care about any of the characters and was bored throughout a good chunk of the movie. The plot twist did show viewers a contrast of how much Buzz had developed as a character and the dangers of an unchecked single-minded focus. The only other redeeming trait is Sox.
There’s not much originality in the movie, the characters are barely fleshed out and often have a “kiddish” sense of humor. I’m not being negative simply because this is a kids movie or because it’s animated. I’m disappointed because Pixar and Disney have created lots of animated kids movies that also entertain adults and have held up through many rewatches (Tangled, Ratatouille, animated Mulan just to name a few). But this movie is not one I’ll be lining up to rewatch any time soon (or ever).
And of course my favorite portion of the review:
