Lightyear

I don't get the bad reviews! The score at the time of writing is pretty horrible, and I don't understand. This isn't the best from Disney and Pixar, but it is a great addition and a clever way to tell a new story set in the Toy Story universe. It brings great animation and the array of emotion that we have come to love from the studio.

The movie lightyear is the movie that got Andy excited for the new Buzz lightyear toy in the universe of toy story. A great sci-fi action flick for both children and adults with a story of friendship, acceptance and the importance of taking a step back from time to time. Chris Evans as Buzz does a great job of capturing the essence of the iconic voice delivered by Tim Allen in the original. The side characters are great and have some fun dialogue and one liners, especially the cat Sox is amazing and next to every single joke made the theater laugh.

The animation and story is great, but it does feel a bit safe. The animation is stunning but a bit bland at times, and it isn't as colorful compared to other movies, and it doesn't have a distinct style, but stays inside a boundary. The story is good and does have quite a few tear pressers, but it is something you will have seen in other movies before.

Lightyear feels safe, not as exploratory and daring as previous Pixar films, but it is a good movie worth watching, especially if you love the original movies. All around it's a fun and entertaining movie, with great humor and a few heart wrenching moments.

7/10.

6.4/10

The nostalgia was there for ten minutes and then it went away as the story trails away into something that just didn't sit right. While we never got firm info about Buzz's origins in the "Toy Story" films. This isn't what I expected for his story. I expected this to be an emotional journey, but there were maybe three moments where a tear was shed. The rest was just "empty" space.

The voice acting was good. Chris Evans sounded like Buzz and brought the character to life. The surrounding characters were just as enjoyable. Definitely some funny moments amongst them. I did get a few laughs out, but it felt forced sometimes to be able to enjoy the film.

The film definitely looked, and sounded, great, but it didn't do enough to grasp a love for the character, or the story. Honestly, I don't think this film was for adults to reach back to the childhood nostalgia, but rather its for a new generation to make the character it's own meaning. Flip side to Buzz was Zurg. Zurg was perhaps the biggest disappointment with how they portrayed him. Who he was in "Toy Story" is not the same as who is here, and again, it didn't sit right.

I think the biggest thing is to forget the trailer. Go in with an open-mind and make of it what you will. The kids in the theatre seemed to have loved.

Overall, not the outstanding film I was expecting even with all the great visual and sound. The story lacked expectations for a nostalgic character, but wasn't necessarily terrible, so again, go in with an open-mind.

Thank you for reading my review. Until next time.... Enjoy the show!

I went to see this with my 5 year old daughter, and in the build up to seeing it - I took to IMDB to get a feel for the rating. At that time, it was a poor 5.5. My rule of thumb is, anything lower then 6 is probably not worth it - but my daughter was super keen, so we went for it. And I am glad I did. A good film, with solid principles baked into it about team work, determination and friendship. I get why the rating on it is lowish on here, it's not a patch on the toy stories, but it is worth watching. You just have to go in with the mentality of this is going to be a good stand-alone film and not strictly tied to the toy story franchise, (although a close relative.).

As a sci-fi fan, I found the film mildly entertaining, if only for the setting and concepts, but I get why it didn't land well with the general audience. I think the film had two major flaws that dragged it down.

First would be that the film couldn't decide what it wanted to be. It took itself too seriously and had too many convoluted concepts (time dilation, time travel, alternate timelines) to be enjoyed by children, but it also didn't really explore any of it's themes or concepts well enough to be enjoyed by adults. This whole film really comes across as Interstellar-lite, which is just an odd thing to base a kids film on.

The other issue for me was the characters. They just weren't very engaging. Buzz himself came off as kind of humorless and dour, and the rest of the cast was entirely one note. Buzz's team in particularly just felt tacked on and didn't really add anything to the film. Tim Allen is a better Buzz Lightyear. Even Patrick Warburton is probably a better Buzz in terms of being engaging and fun. Chris Evans does a solid job here, and I kind of agree that he brings a more "human" quality compared to the wacky Tim Allen. But when you look at how devoid of energy the film is, I have to wonder if Tim Allen could have somehow injected some life into this movie with clever ad-libs. This movie needed energy, and it has nothing in the tank.

Ultimately, I think the film just needed to pick a lane. Either make this a fun adventure romp across the galaxy, or lean into the mature themes and ideas. As is, it's a film that didn't really make me laugh or make me feel anything, it's just kind of "there".

This film seems to spark a lot of people to say that this film is completely terrible or that it's completely fabulous because it included a gay relationship in the periphery of the main story, and to an even lesser extent, a convict character who is sympathetic. So. I'll address that quickly: None of that seemed like a big selling-point or issue with the movie to me. And those reviewer who make the movie all about those things seem to say more about themself in their review than the movie itself.

Overall I found the movie better than what I was expecting based on it's IMDB score, but still far from being a Pixar classic.

The animation is very good, the story is solid even if it feels like a lot of the ideas have been done before in different ways and feels like a few ideas didn't quite work as well as possible. In some ways it reminded me of an inferior "Up". The main protagonist's circumstance were less sympathetic and more a result of his actual decisions. Overall I wonder how the movie would have looked if it had explored a B storyline for another character during some of the time-jumps. I also think the twist could have been established a little better than it was.

The voice acting for the film is fine. I didn't think a lot of the comedy landed well for me. But it wasn't awful like a lot of kids movies either and didn't detract much from the drama of the main story. Overall it will be acceptable to most audiences, with the robot cat being a likely favorite character for many viewers. Most kids will probably like it a bit more than adults and not notice or care much about the politically controversial content unless their guardians have already primed them to have an major opinion about it like them.

I'd say it's a good time at the theater and better than the average score right now of 5.8. But don't expect it to be a classic Pixar film like Coco, Up, Walle, or Toy Story 1-3.