Rent Lightyear (2022)

Lightyear review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

The Toy Story character of Buzz Lightyear was an absurdly loveable character for being the fish-out-of-water toy, believing he’s an actual space ranger and not just a toy of Andy. Now Pixar attempts to see if an audience would buy him as an actual space ranger. That’s a tough reworking for such a character that has become accustomed to comedy. Thankfully, Lightyear manages to be more than just a nostalgic reworking of a Toy Story icon.

At first, they filmed as though it would be more than that. The prologue was not very promising by assuring the audience you’re seeing a movie that exists within the Toy Story universe but one that Andy saw before getting Buzz Lightyear for his birthday. This information has nothing to do with the narrative but I’m assuming the obnoxious film theorists will shut up about this aspect if it’s divulged. The film begins with Buzz (Chris Evans) leading a Star Command vessel that stops on a mysterious planet. He immediately starts quoting the character’s familiar dialogue from Toy Story and one worries that this will be the whole film. Don’t worry though; it’s not.

Buzz’s ego and unwillingness to work with others ultimately doom his crew to be marooned on this unknown planet. He’s got some learning to do while his Star Command team tries to live in this new environment and find a way back home. Buzz, ever the leader, believes he can be the sole savior by finding just the right mixture of interstellar flight to save everybody. But he makes more than a few errors and finds himself relying on teamwork now more than ever.

Buzz finds Star Command under attack by the mysterious robot forces of Emperor Zurg (James Brolin). His only help to save the day is the robot cat Sox (Peter Sohn), the daring Izzy (Keke Palmer), the cautious Mo (Taika Waititi), and the bitter Darby (Dale Soules). With the exception of the genius Sox, they’re a bunch of misfits with very little experience in space adventures but that just means Buzz needs to be more of a torch-passer than a torch-runner. It’s not an easy lesson but one that will certainly be exciting when it involves robots, lasers, spaceships, and explosives.

The greater theme of Lightyear is all about the importance of people in your life and making the most of the time you’re given in this existence. This is something that becomes difficult for Buzz to learn as time marches on and he seems to change so little. This leads up to a rather introspective finale where Lightyears learns about far more than how to play nice to beat the bad guys.

That being said, this is a surprisingly thrilling adventure with some genuine moments of tension. Nearly every space scene for the daring showdown of Star Command versus Zurg looks immaculate, especially with the IMAX-shot sequences. Scenes of Izzy nearly drifting out into the endless void of space and Lightyear nearly being toppled by an exploding starship are enticing enough to go toe-to-toe with any live-action sci-fi action picture. Just another strong reminder that animation is much more than just family-friendly comedy.

Lightyear is probably not going to soar to the top of most lists for the best Pixar films but it’s far from the bottom tiers. It moves fast enough and adopts the sci-fi genre with a narrative worthy of Star Trek and visuals to compete with Star Wars. More importantly, it touches on a rather robust mature theme of finding what really matters in life. It’s not all about robots and starships, although it certainly helps that the robotic cat of Sox is the perfect bit of dry-witted comic relief.