Buzz l'Éclair - Le film - Le debut des aventures

In a web interview a few years ago, one of the head honchos at Pixar was asked the secret to making a successful kids' movie and he said it was to make something that adults will enjoy. Kids, he said, have terrible taste; they'll will watch anything. A kids' movie that is too dumb for the grown-ups is going to languish at the box office. But if you make a movie with some clever dialogue and engaging plot, plus some elementary "teaching moments" that mainstream parents can discuss with their kids, then you will enjoy robust ticket and video sales.

Pixar put that formula to good use with their successful run of computer-animated films, but I am hesitant to watch anything released direct to video. But I was pleasantly surprised with Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins.

There's more "kids' stuff" here than in Toy Story and its progeny, but there's still plenty for adults to love. The voice talents are top-flight, especially Wayne Knight as Zurg. (Kudos also go to Stephen Furst, Adam Corolla and Larry Miller, all of whom seemed to be enjoying themselves and working their roles well.) Besides the voices, the film also offers some clever dialogue and good visual humor (picture a lazy robot reading a catalogue called "Victoria's Circuits"). The plot is competent. Good themes (like valuing teamwork and obeying the rules even when you don't like it) give the kids something to think about.

Finally, William Shatner shows up in the end credits with a laugh-out-loud spoken rendition of the Buzz Lightyear theme song: "To Infinity and Beyond." I had a good time explaining to my nephews and my son about Shatner's infamous "Lucy In the Sky (With Diamonds)" recording.

I'd like to see Pixar make more stuff like this.

If you ever want a bit of a laugh while babysitting, this might be a good film to have with you. Kids will love it simply because it's got Buzz Lightyear, an amusing villain, and loads of aliens. Maybe it's just a sign of my immaturity, but I found quite a lot of the jokes in this movie very funny (and even the parts that aren't funny can be vaguely amusing in their corniness). The characters do a lot for the movie - Lightyear's unlikely friend and partner Warp Darkmatter has several funny lines, and XR's personality changes and sarcasm make him quite endearing. Even the villain, the Evil Emperor Zurg, has his likable moments.

While you won't miss any life-changing moments if you don't see this movie (and really, it pales in comparison to the Toy Story movies), it's a good choice if you've seen every other kids' movie too many times and want to watch something that'll amuse you too.

... but then, he's a big Toy Story fanatic anyway. Yes, this is essentially the pilot for a Disney "One Saturday Morning" cartoon offering, but it does help provide a bit more background as to the legend of Buzz Lightyear. If you're buying or renting a movie for a Toy Story fan, this will do just fine. I love Diedrich Bader as the voice of "Agent Z".

You can probably guess that I loved the two Pixar films, they were sophisticated, funny and imaginative. This is a decent feature length pilot to the equally decent TV series. Of course some of it is corny, with one or two lacklustre plot points and a rather scant length. But the animation is good, more the galactic backgrounds rather than the character animation. Also there is some good music with William Shatner providing the biggest surprise singing over the end credits, and an excellent voice cast especially Wayne Knight as Zurg. A vast majority of the jokes are hits than misses, the best coming from Booster and Warp, and the dialogue has its moments. The characters have nice personalities, Mira is lovely, while Buzz is a good hero and Zurg an amusing villain. Overall, uneven but a decent pilot to a decent series. 7/10 Bethany Cox

In "Toy Story 2," Woody finds out that he came from the TV show "Woody's Roundup"; Buzz Lightyear did it the other way around and for real. The trouble is that "Buzz Lightyear of Star Command" never really worked as a series, and this video feature doesn't really cut it - and that's without taking either of its truly great predecessors into consideration. If you do...

Essentially a feature-length pilot for the TV series*, "Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins" opens with a Pixar-animated prologue wherein Andy's toys get ready to watch the very movie we're about to (the subsequent series also begins with Buzz, Woody, Slinky etc congregating in front of the TV); the point of this is never clear, especially since Woody's reference to how Buzz is drawn underlines how different the two ventures are. The story has Buzz and his partner Warp Darkmatter rescuing three Little Green Men from Emperor Zurg, but when Warp is killed in the fighting our hero swears he won't have any partners anymore; as fans of the show know he wound up with three of them anyway, and this relates how he got together with Mira, Booster and XR.

The movie's got its moments (like the throwaway gag where XR reads a Victoria's Circuit catalogue) and it's hardly boring, but I can't imagine many viewers who've seen more than, oh, five movies being surprised at the movie's biggest plot twist; and the wit and depth of the previous movies is sucked out, leaving little more than a standard comedy-action cartoon. True, it makes sense that a toy like Buzz would inspire a cash-in TV series in the world according to "Toy Story," but do we actually have to see it? Watchable but bland; however, you can't deny that "He-Man" et al never had end credit songs from William Shatner(!).

*Like several other Disney TV cartoons ("TaleSpin," "Chip'N'Dale Rescue Rangers"), the pilot was later edited down and shown on the series in several parts, in this case three. In that version (those versions?), Shatner's song and the prologue with the video are absent, and Tim Allen's voice is replaced by Patrick Warburton, who provided Buzz's voice on the series.