Lightyear (2022) Review

 "That was utterly terrifying and I regret having joined."

-Sox

Lightyear tells the story of Buzz Lightyear (Chris Evans), a space ranger who is marooned on an unknown planet and is determined to find a way to get himself and his crew home.  The movie would go on to sell merchandise, including action figures, which set up the plot of Toy Story.

What Works:

As with most Pixar movies, Lightyear is beautifully animated.  It's a good-looking film, especially when Buzz goes into hyperspace.  I have problems with this movie, but none of them come from the animation.

Buzz spends a lot of the 1st act skipping through time.  His missions only take him a few minutes, but they are years for his crew back on the planet.  It's a really interesting concept and is effective at making Buzz a fish out of water.  He's missed out on so much.  It also does a good job of making the audience see things from Buzz's perspective because we missed out on everything Buzz did.  I wish they had gone further with this stuff, but I did like what we got.

Finally, Sox (Peter Sohn) is a robotic cat built to help Buzz out.  Sox is the best part of the movie, without a doubt.  Peter Sohn is fantastic in the role.  He's got far more personality than just being a typical robot assistant and nearly every funny moment in the movie comes from him.  Plus he looks and occasionally acts like a cat and I love cats.

What Sucks:

As with most people, I hold Pixar to a pretty high standard.  I expect great things from them and they almost always deliver.  Maybe if Lightyear had been made by a different studio, I would have liked it more, but it was made by Pixar and it's probably my least favorite Pixar film.  Granted, I've only seen 18 out of the 26 movies and I haven't seen any of the less popular ones, so that could change in the future.

Buzz Lightyear himself is one of the major problems.  Buzz works in the Toy Story movies because he believes he is a space ranger, but he isn't.  That makes him funny to watch and interesting because he's so delusional.  He's far less interesting when he is actually a space ranger.  This Buzz isn't over-the-top at all.  He's much closer to Captain America than anything, who I also don't find to be a particularly compelling character.  I don't think this is Chris Evans' fault, I just don't think Buzz works as a straightforward protagonist.

The side characters aren't exactly compelling either.  Apart from Sox, all of them are very one note and didn't engage me at all.  To make things worse, the leader of the colony, Commander Burnside (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), kicks off a lot of the conflict by ending Buzz's missions and accepting that they are stuck on the planet.  I don't buy that conflict for one second, especially coming from a military commander character.  It felt very forced to make the conflict of the movie happen.

I guess the biggest problem is that I wasn't invested in a lot of the movie because I didn't care about the characters, except for Sox.  Whenever Sox is involved and in danger, I was enjoying myself quite a bit.  Otherwise, I just didn't care all that much and felt bored on occasion.

Verdict:

Lightyear is fine.  It's certainly not a bad movie.  I was just expecting more.  The animation is great, the movie has some interesting ideas, and Sox is fantastic.  It's just that the rest of the characters aren't interesting, part of the plot feels forced, and it just doesn't reach the quality Pixar usually delivers.  Wait to watch this one on Disney Plus.  Don't spend money to see it in theaters.

 6/10: Okay