It’s a new (old) adventure for the popular star man. Let us try to explain.
A needlessly complicated and narratively underwhelming space adventure, “Lightyear” is not worthy of its titular action hero, Buzz Lightyear, who at this point is nearly as beloved in American pop culture as real life astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. It takes the “Toy Story” icon and sticks him in a meandering story that never hits the stars and struggles to even achieve liftoff. Audiences are used to infinity and beyond from the character, while “Lightyear” relegates him to the realms of second-tier Pixar. An introduction positions “Lightyear” as the movie that inspired the Buzz Lightyear toy that Andy, the child from 1995’s original “Toy Story”, called his own. In other words, Buzz is a character from a “Star Wars”-like big screen sci-fi feature, and “Lightyear” is that feature, which suggests a late ’80s or early ’90s action-adventure with a fun retro-future aesthetic. Yet “Lightyear” is a galaxy away from that story, and it’s as if the intro text was added onto the film following its completion and the filmmakers were working from a different set of blueprints altogether. “Lightyear” is thoroughly modern in its characters, humor and sensibilities, and lacks even the kind of imagination that Andy would have dreamt up in his head while playing with his Buzz and Woody dolls all those years ago. Chris Evans voices Buzz in a performance that lacks the humor, personality and twinkle or heroism that Tim Allen brought to the role over the course of four “Toy Story” films.
