Lightyear

This weekend, Lightyear, blasted off into theaters. Lightyear is the movie that Buzz the Toy is based on. Lightyear follows Buzz Lightyear as he and his team are stranded on an unknown planet. After spending years trying to get off the planet, Buzz encounters Zurg and his army of robots who are trying to steal his fuel source.

This was a very enjoyable movie. It had the usual polish of a Pixar movie in terms of animation as well as the normal emotional moments you expect from Pixar. The overall story was interesting. I'm a big fan of Sci-Fi movies so this story was definitely right up my alley. I also really enjoyed the time travel aspect. It involved time travel a lot more than I was expecting but I was totally on board for it. A lot of people had an issue with the fact that Tim Allen didn't voice Buzz but it made sense to me why this was the case. Typically, when you have a toy that talks, the voice sounds close to the actual character but is not a 100% match just due to the voice box being used. Chris Evans did a good job as the voice of Buzz. He sounds similar enough to Tim Allen that you can buy that one is the voice of an actual person while the other is the voice of a toy. The movie also had a lot of funny moments in it, particularly from the characters of Sox and Mo. Both of those characters steal every scene they were in and made me laugh multiple times. Finally, I really enjoyed that the movie made a lot of callbacks to the Toy Story Buzz, by showcasing a lot of his lines from the Toy Story films into this film. Because of this, it really gives context to some of the lines Toy Buzz says.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of issues I had with the film. The main issue is that I wasn't a fan of the direction they took Zurg. I was hoping for a more conventional sinister villain like he is portrayed in the Toy Story films but instead, the film decided to go in a different direction with him. Everyone knows Zurg as just this evil villain out to get Buzz and I just didn't like that the movie did not do that. The other issue I had is that I felt that Pixar played this film a little too safe. While it is still a good story and didn't necessarily do a lot of things wrong, it just didn't go for an original story like their other films have. The story they told is a pretty standard Sci-Fi story, and while I do enjoy those, I was just expecting a bit more from a Pixar film. A lot of the other Pixar films go for high concepts or topics that are difficult to talk about but this one just decided to play it standard and safe.

Overall, Lightyear is a good enough spin-off of the Toy Story story and while it has a good story and characters, the movie just felt a little too safe by Pixar standards to be a top-tier film from the studio.

Score: 7.5/10 Grade: B Recommendation: Go See it