#27 LIGHTYEAR

Written by Jason exclamation and Angus MacLane, directed by Angus MacLane. Voice actors Chris Evans, Keke Palmer, Peter Sohn, James Brolin, Kaika Waititi, Dal Soules and Uzo Aduba. Budget $200 million. Running time 105 minutes.

In 1995 Andy, the boy from Toy Story, saw a film that was to blown his tiny little mind, and become the single most defining moment of his life. Or so we are told in the caption heralds the start of this 105 minutes cash grab from Disney/Pixar. That film is this one, although its full title in the Toy Story universe is Buzz Lightyear: Space Ranger.

The plot, this bit takes a long time to summarise, feel free to skip the next four paragraphs until...

The plot, which takes two thirds of the running time to actually get going, introduces us to our plucky, lantern jawed hero Buzz, who uses every-single-phrase the Buzz Lightyear of Toy Story used in the opening five minutes of this film, just to let you know this is BUZZ LIGHTYEAR and to reinforce the brand. In this film outing Buzz is awakened from hyper sleep to pilot the Space Ranger starship nicknamed the 'turnip' out of hyper-speed to investigate a new planet that has signs of life.

They land on a planet whose only two lifeforms appear to be insanely aggressive intelligent underground tentacle and a flying armoured bugs. Space Rangers Buzz and his best bud, Hawthorn, and a young rookie set out to investigate the planet. Within seconds of landing the vines attack, some start to drag the HUGE spaceship underground while the others grab the rookie and drag him underground too, and Buzz and Hawthorn race to save both before, you know disaster.

However disaster does strike and the Turnip crashes, leaving it stranded on the planet, thanks to Buzz's attempt to save everybody. It turns out that the crystal that the Turnip needed to achieve hyper-speed was broken in the crash and unless the crew of the Turnip can create a new one they're all stuck on the planet forever. And we're almost ready for the actual story to start.

Buzz is given the mission of test flying a series of spaceships powered by newly grown crystals in an attempt to find one to power the turnip back home. Each time a new crystal is tested it fails and thanks to time dilation costs Buzz 11 years of everyone else's life, which means after four failed missions everyone Buzz knew is now dead of old age. To help him deal with the terrible scenario, a robotic companion cat called Sox is given to him. On the return from one of these test flights, Buzz, now in his far off future finds the planet under siege from a mysterious massive robotic figure called Zurg and his army of flying, stupid robots and joins forces with a rag-bag team of rebel fighters who include the grand-daughter of his old pal Hawthorn and together they set off to fight Zurg. But who is he and what is his connection to Buzz...

...Here!

And that is the plot!

First the good. This looks fantastic, Pixar's ability to create fantastically designed, stunningly  beautiful animated worlds is without peer and this film is no exception. It's a beautifully realised world and the animation is top notch. 

Now the rest. What isn't topnotch, or beautiful is the god-awful generic plot and by-the-numbers script and dialogue. Pixar used to create incredible films that were story lead, in fact they claimed that 'story was king', what a wonderful way to make movies, especially animated one. For 15 years, from 1995 they produced 11 incredible movies, of which 10 were masterpieces and only two, Toy Story 2 and 3 were sequels.

But this is just a very generic, rather dull story with nothing new to say, and it's hard to believe that this film is the film that would define Toy Story's Andy.  

According to Toy Story lore, Andy was 6 years old when he first saw Buzz Lightyear A surprising discovery to be honest, because for me, at the age of six, the film I  saw at the cinema that blew my tiny little mind was The Italian Job (FUN FACT! the first grown up film I ever saw at the cinema, thanks mum!) 

All I can think is that because the animation in this film would have made Andy's world in 1995 seem so low res, badly rendered and crude he was captivated by it and that's what made it so defining, cos it's not the story.

There are cringy character tropes, plot holes, stupid slapstick moments and 'story beats' that do nothing to move the story along, they're just there to add some action. The secondary characters are generic types who aid or derail our plucky hero's journey accordingly, and who obviously go from zeroes to heroes in the end. You'll grown and tut at some of their shenanigans and actions, as they bungle and stumble, for comic relief. There's a running gag with a pen, and I say running cos it's like liquid diarrhea, that will have you groaning out loud when its punchline finally lumbers into view. 

There was one interesting idea in this film, the time dilation concept, but that's quickly forgotten cos this film ain't got time to bleed, it's got a wacky kid's story to tell and you know kids! They want fun things, explosions and lots of wacky silly stuff and a cute character to buy toys of. Everything else can sod off. 

And that bullshit about the first onscreen, same-sex, kiss can sod right off too! Talk about cop out. It's a genuine blink and you'll miss it moment, so brief and toothless is it, that it feels like just one more post-it-note trope the writers could tick off their story beat board. 

So, looks great, but it's popcorn and it won't pull your heartstrings and make you cry like Up, or the Toy Story films, or Wall-e, it won't dazzle you like The Incredibles, and it won't be remembered the next day. It's just there to make money for Disney and sell toys. 

And, there's no way on god's green earth that any six-year old kid is going to have his world rocked by this. He'll forget it the moment he's seen Minions: The Rise of Gru.

6/10