YOU! ARE! A! TOY!
While watching Lightyear, I couldn’t shake the sensation that I was watching the second movie in a series and had accidentally skipped the first.The film assumes we can fill lots of gaps, particularly about Buzz himself. We have four Toy Story features, a large handful of shorts, a Buzz Lightyear animated direct-to-video film, and a spinoff Buzz TV series, so on the surface this is a reasonable assumption.
But there’s a problem. Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story 1 is really only interesting insofar as he believes he is a run-of-the-mill space ranger, amplified by Tim Allen’s self-satisfied everyman vocal performance. He’s not an interesting character in isolation! It’s the juxtaposition that makes Buzz Lightyear such an inspired creation. Both that juxtaposition and Allen’s performance are gone, the latter replaced by a cheap Chris Evans imitation that apes some of Allen’s tics but none of the flavor or edge.
And so what we’re left with is an oddly empty protagonist, not helped by a script that changes its mind about three times about what Buzz’s main motivation is. The movie is designed as an origin for Buzz Lightyear, so if the character himself is not clicking, what’s left?
Certainly not a polished story. Lightyear has an odd, choppy structure: After an intro that shows a space base crashing in the midst of a mission failure, the film’s first act tells a melancholy, Forever War-esque story of time dilation and temporal displacement. It ostensibly sets the film’s stakes, but it’s told at such a brisk pace, almost in montage, that the movie never finds its footing in these opening minutes.
This segment introduces Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba), Buzz’s trusted mission partner, whose life he sees in snapshots as he burns years at a time via time dilation trying to escape a planet. You might know Alisha as the lesbian character whose same-sex marriage and kiss sparked a culture skirmish. I do in fact wish the character was straight myself, but for a totally different reason: Had Alisha’s connection with Buzz been romantic, or even had the suggestion and possibility of romance, it would have added an extra dimension to Buzz watching her fall in love, start a family, grow old, and then die in snapshots; it would have added more self-sacrifice and road-not-taken pathos to Buzz’s obsession with “finishing the mission” as the world around him changes in the blink of an eye.
If this act of the story had been polished and stretched to feature length, it might have been genuinely great and poignant. Instead, it barely registers, and then the film completely changes gears. One bizarre idea tossed to the dustbin; onto the next. The movie develops an identity crisis it will not resolve by its conclusion.
Lightyear abrupty shifts during its second act to a more straightforward scrappy-underdog sci-fi adventure. Buzz unites with a handful of misfit soldiers to take down a force of “Zyclops” monsters. This is easily the movie’s best stretch (not its most interesting, but its most functional), though even it has plenty of hiccups. The bumbling comic relief moments are more miss than hit, and Buzz’s character is actively unpleasant in the way he spurns the “rookies”; there’s little chemistry among the disposable ragtag bunch. But there’s something to be said for Pixar’s world-class CGI magic and strong direction turned towards sci-fi spectacle. It’s quite thrilling at times. The alien monsters are gloriously designed and rendered, and the action set pieces are creative fun.
Alas, the film lurches once more into its third act with one of the most brash plot twists I can recall in any kids movie. I admire the film for taking a swing, but it doesn’t remotely work. Anything you thought you knew about the characters in the Buzz Lightyear universe is undone in a single storytelling choice. (Hell, it actively contradicts Toy Story 2.) It’s a cheeky bit of writing but it undermines any of the film’s momentum or growth to Buzz up to that point.
The film is not devoid of charm: Lightyear has plenty of visual acumen, and I like the robot cat sidekick Sox quite a bit (even if the film uses the beat of Sox saving the day last-moment too many times). And it’s undeniably a technically proficient and well-made piece of CGI animation; it is pleasant, even occasionally exciting, to look at.
Yet Lightyear ultimately does far more wrong than right. Even Pixar at its safest and most forgettable has been no worse than solid entertainment; Lightyear is the studio’s biggest misfire since they cast Larry the Cable Guy as a lead.
- Review Series: 2022: Year in Film
Is It Good?
Not Very Good (3/8)
Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.