Lightyear (2022)

I am quite behind on my Pixar viewings nowadays, sadly. With one or two notable exceptions (mainly the Cars movies), I was happy to see every one of them as soon as I could. But two things have now combined to take the shine off them. One is a more varying level of quality, and the other is the fact that having them release directly on to a streaming service allows me to think “oh well, it is there when I want to eventually get to it” for a few of their main titles.

Lightyear was not high on my list of priorities, but the fact that it landed so early on a streaming service meant that I actually decided I would check it out right away. I like the main voice cast, I like the franchise it is side-stepping from, and I like some fun sci-fi shenanigans. So I expected to enjoy an evening planned with this as my main event.

It was okay. It was odd, and a step below the quality of the main Toy Story movies, but okay, hampered by one major detail that I will get to soon enough.

This is not necessarily the tale of a character named Buzz Lightyear (voices here by Chris Evans). I mean . . . it IS, but it is also supposed to be, most importantly, the film that Andy saw in the mid-1990s that made him want a Buzz Lightyear action figure. Buzz is not real. He is a film character. Remember that.

While exploring some strange new worlds, Buzz ends up crashing the spaceship while attempting a desperate escape from hostile life-forms. He really thought he could do it alone, and he also thinks he can be the person responsible for testing the necessary fuel crystals that can take his vehicle to the right speeds needed to get everyone home again. Unfortunately, every time Buzz makes a space trip, minutes for him, years pass by on the planet below. People age, have full lives, and pass away while Buzz keeps trying his best to complete his mission, his only constant being a robo-cat, SOX, that was gifted to him for companionship. As the years pass, disaster strikes, the planet is besieged by the dastardly Zurg (James Brolin) and his many robot warriors. Buzz finds a ragtag group of non-professionals who think they can help him put things right, but can they overcome the biggest obstacle, which is Buzz trying to do everything on his own?

Other characters worth noting here are Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba), a good friend to Buzz who we see at various stages in her life, and the group of amateurs who end up helping our hero: Izzy Hawthorne (the daughter of Alisha, voiced by Keke Palmer), Darby Steel (an elderly woman on parole, and very handy with explosives, voiced by Dale Soules), and Mo Morrison (someone who seems to be constantly out of his depth in any situation requiring some combat skill, voiced by Taika Waititi).

The first feature to be solely directed by Andrew MacLane, there’s nothing technical here that deserves too much criticism. Although aiming for a slightly different style to a number of other Pixar movies, this looks and sounds about as good as you would expect. MacLane does a perfectly decent job, but he is stifled by the script, which he helped to co-write with about four other people (Andrew Stanton, Matthew Aldrich, Jason Headley, and Lauren Gunderson), which generally lacks the charm and heart that viewers have, rightly, come to expect from Pixar. It also comes perilously close to replicating Lost In Space (1998) at times, and I don’t think anyone was asking for an animated reworking of the Lost In Space movie.

Evans is a good choice for the lead, and he has the confident tone in his voice that Buzz needs, as well as investing his character with some sadness and regret in time for the “insurmountable” obstacles to be overcome in the finale, hopefully. Palmer is delightful, Soules and Waititi are both good fun, and Brolin is a suitably weighty villain (in terms of his vocal delivery). Aduba does well with her relatively small amount of screentime, and Peter Sohn is a real highlight while voicing SOX.

Taken as an animated sci-if film without any other context, this is perfectly fine, if disappointingly unmemorable, entertainment. The biggest thing that works against this is the way it is framed. Thinking of the age Andy should have been when he saw it, and of how impactful it is supposed to have been, it just never feels authentic or more than a cynical attempt to wring more money from a franchise that should now probably be left alone. I know it may seem really silly, but I couldn’t watch this without constantly thinking that it was sub-par. And not just sub-par for me, I just couldn’t imagine a kid being so impressed by it that they had to get the action figure (an action figure that, as we see, was missing a number of potentially exciting accessories).

Maybe I have just forgotten how strongly we can react to the widest range of entertainment when we are kids. Or maybe this just isn’t quite good enough. Not good enough for viewers today, nor good enough for fictional viewers who would have seen this back in the first half of the 1990s.

5/10

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Onward (2020)

Here's the starting point for this review. Onward is a disappointing film from Pixar. The fact that it IS from Pixar means there is still a lot here to enjoy, but it's disappointing, even if the message about sibling love/care feels like a slight improvement on the neverending stream of movies aimed at kids with a message all about how the people who created them during the act of sex are the best, and most important, people in the universe, and to be loved by them is the cure for everything ever. 

I admit . . . that has been a bugbear of mine for many years. I have my reasons.

Tom Holland voices Ian Lightfoot, the younger brother of Barley Lightfoot (Chris Pratt). The brothers live in a magical world that has left a lot of the old ways behind, for more convenient methods. They live with their mother, Laurel (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and the shadow cast by the death of their father. So it becomes an urgent matter when the brothers are given a gift from their late father, a magical staff and instructions on how to bring him back for one extra day with them. So begins a quest that will involve some erratic driving, some angry pixies, a number of death-defying moments, a manticore, and lessons about the people in your life who help bring out the best in you.

Visually, Onward is lovely. The quality of the animation is as you would expect from Pixar, although it's a shame that every scene isn't packed out with the usual selection of details and small gags that we've come to expect from them. Maybe they are now a victim of their own success, and there are certainly plenty of lovely touches to pick up on repeat viewings (while occasionally pausing the movie), but it definitely feels like this movie is set in a universe that was not as fully-formed as the environments in so many other Pixar movies.

Holland and Pratt are decent leads, and their vocal performances somehow emanate a nice helping of brotherly love, but the rest of the cast feels a bit . . . lacking. Louis-Dreyfus is a fine mom character, Octavia Spencer is wonderful as the Manticore, but they're the only ones who stand out. Mel Rodriguez gets a number of good lines, playing Colt Bronco, a centaur police officer dating Mrs Lightfoot (and let's not even start considering the ramifications of THAT relationship), but it would have been nice to have a more familiar voice in that role.

Director Dan Scanlon also co-created the story and screenplay with Keith Bunin and Jason Headley, and this feels like a film that may have been better handed over to someone a step removed from the story. Everyone involved treats it as something a bit too precious, which is why the better moments (the angry pixies being a highlight) are so few and far between. As sweet and predictable as the ending is, it also feels like the safest and dullest way to tie everything up in time for the pending end credits.

As mentioned at the very start of this review, however, there is still plenty to enjoy here. It's not as bad as The Good Dinosaur (which remains the worst of the many Pixar movies I have seen so far, although I have yet to watch the Cars movies, despite owning them). It's just not half as good as it could have been. It's Onward, but no step upward.

6/10

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