“Lightyear,” Pixar’s 26th film, has a premise that is explained by the film’s opening title. It seems that in 1995, Andy, the young hero of “Toy Story”, received an action figure from Buzz Lightyear as a gift. That was because he had seen a Buzz Lightyear movie and loved it. “Lightyear” is this movie.
There are many ways in which Pixar magicians could have made this premise. One imagines a Buzz Lightyear home story in which he is a cheeky young beginner who is going through flight training. And since Buzz, with his curved plastic space suit adorned with cardboard ornaments and a bubble helmet, is the most futuristic of all the “Toy Story” games, one could imagine that the movie unfolds. within Pixar’s most delirious children’s science fiction landscapes.
But “Lightyear,” in its eminently conventional and sympathetic way, is a much less daring film than this one. As it opens, Buzz is more or less the Buzz Lightyear we know: an absurdly confident test pilot who is a gifted fighter but also a delicious egomaniac, too safe for his own good, given the acrobatics he believes which he can do just because … he’s Buzz. He and his crew, who are circling the galaxy exploring new worlds in the manner of the “Star Trek” team, have landed on a planet populated by very aggressive vineyards and some occasional rust-stained robot. When forced to make a quick getaway, piloting the spaceship (which Buzz calls “the turnip” because it is shaped) out of a steep valley, Buzz miscalculates, damaging the ship by scratching it against a rock and running aground. -the. all on the barren planet.
For what is probably not the first time, Buzz’s short-sighted bravado, I-can-do-do-anyone, has failed. He thought what was happening was all about him. “Lightyear” will be the film in which you will learn to think and care about others, but still, it plays less as a home story than as the central episode of a Buzz Lightyear adventure franchise. in progress.
The whole movie is about how Buzz, along with a trusted team of fellow space explorers, struggles to get off this planet. He first tries to fly his own rocket at high speed, and while he continues to try, and fails, to achieve this, he returns from each experimental mission with only a few more minutes, but several years have passed on the planet. This means that we see the development of the life of his friend and colleague, Captain Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba), while he marries (a woman, about whom the film does not speak admirably), has a child and , finally, he dies. . Her grandson, Izzy (Keke Palmer), who is her spitting image, joins the Buzz crew, along with Sox (voiced by Peter Sohn), a hilarious, real robot feline who looks like the ‘they bought at a gift shop, in addition to Darby. Steel (Dale Soules), a crunchy criminal, and Mo Morrison (Taika Waititi), a nervous walking case.
Can they destroy the huge alien robot spaceship gliding in the sky: a mysterious ship presided over by a horned megabot, Emperor Zurg (James Brolin), who has bright red devil eyes? The identity of this brazen droid turns out to be much closer to home than you expected. And “Lightyear” is full of elegantly fun chases and getaways and chunks of trick business, like IVAN, the autopilot that despises Buzz, plus an ingenious gag about the sandwich’s evolution. Taking its own terms with a desire to please, the film is a winning fun. But given that it’s a spin-off of the “Toy Story” series, which is the biggest and most sustained hit in contemporary animation, it’s worth noting that this is one of those Pixar movies that looks which has 50 percent Disney DNA.
One confession: the first time I saw “Toy Story,” not knowing who the voice actors were, I was sure that Buzz, with his pretty chin and delirious security, had the look and voice of George Clooney; I was shocked to learn that Tim Allen was making his voice heard. Throughout the three sequels, Allen has done a brilliant job portraying Buzz with this inimitable fusion of heroism and fatuous narcissism, though I still think of the character as clooneyesque. In “Lightyear,” however, he has the voice of Chris Evans, who does an accredited job of recreating the Buzz pilot as a presenter of his own legend, though he misses some of that image of Allen. The character looks less funny, a more normal notch.
Of course, part of that may be that in “Toy Story” movies, he’s a toy; that’s part of the joke, one that Buzz never likes. He is believed to be a true Space Ranger! So when you really turn Buzz Lightyear into a Space Ranger, you expand it and reduce it at the same time. You attenuate your buzz. Throughout the film, Buzz keeps trying to get home; he wants to resume his life of space exploration. He doesn’t realize that with his friends around him, he’s already at home. This is a touching message, albeit standard, but I couldn’t help but agree with Buzz: as solid as entertainment is as “Lightyear,” it seems like it belongs in a more special movie. Makes you wonder: “Woody’s Wild West” will be next? Because that sounds like a way, through pure derived opportunism, to get the toy, and maybe the joy, out of “Toy Story.”
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