Lightyear Taking Us To Another Level of Infinity and Beyond!

It's been a while since I've just had a good time watching an animated movie. Don't get me wrong, I loved Encanto but it still had some very heavy adult themes in it around mental health. So when I went to see Lightyear I had no preconceived notions, except that it was all about Buzz Lightyear and who doesn't love the dude? 

As soon as the movie starts it explains that the film is the movie that Andy saw as a kid in 1995, and that's how he fell in love with Buzz Lightyear. Now, as you're watching the film, there's no way that it was made in 1995, but we'll let that go. It felt very meta, I was watching the movie that helped Andy fall in love with Buzz, and I had watched a movie about Andy falling in love with Buzz that made me fall in love with Buzz. Did that make sense? Also I may have fallen in love with Buzz because Chris Evans voices him and he's Captain Lightyear. So good!

There were some Star Wars parallels in it that were fun, as the cat Sox acts as a R2D2 unit for Buzz. And if you needed some Toy Story movie love, this animated film has that too, with quotes from Buzz and action scenes from those movies. It was just fun to see it all come together. 

My favorite character though was Sox the cat! He brought a lot of fun comic relief to the movie and as a cat person it was fun to see how Buzz and him interacted. It was very much an android human relationship that I thought was great! And if that doesn't sell you on the humor of the film, Taika Watiti (Thor Ragnorok, Our Flag Means Death director and actor) voices a character in the film and they let him keep the fun same sense of humor Taika brings to his other films and shows. Almost all his lines had me giggling. 

For the plot:  

As I mentioned before, this movie has a nice theme but nothing that will make you think deeply about life, or maybe it will. Buzz is the Maverick if you will of Star Command - does his own thing, is the best pilot in the fleet and even steals a ship! He has a fellow space ranger he works with alot, Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba) who he is best friends with, but when a mission goes wrong, them and a whole crew of scientists are stranded on a planet! They have to develop hyper speed to get off the planet that takes years to create and eventually do from the materials on the planet. Buzz of course get to test it, taking a ship into space to see if it works. The mission fails, and as he returns to the planet, he learns that his five minute mission around a star turned out to be four years for everyone else.  Everyone has aged but him but because he believes it is his fault everyone is stranded on that planet, he continues to try to make the hyper speed work, testing it over and over again. Every time he returns his friend Hawthorne has taken a next step in her life - getting engaged, getting married, having a kid, having that kid graduate and then having grandkids. Eventually its been over 62 years (if I recall correctly) and
Hawthorne passes away.

Sox during that time figures out the formula for hyper drive and after Buzz tests it one last time it works! But when Buzz comes back from that mission he's jumped super far ahead and the Emperor Zurg has invaded the planet, and with the help from three clunky cadets Mo, Darby and Izzy, they have to work together to defeat Zurg. Buzz of course hates this because he believes he is the best and that he alone has to fix his mistake.  

I'll leave it at that because there's still so many fun surprises that Toy Story fans will chuckle at as they watch the film. Oh and remember, there are THREE end credit scenes. 

Overall I give it a 3/5 Stars. You know how I called Buzz Maverick? Well there were certainly parallels to Top Gun: Maverick in this film, Top Gun just beat Lightyear to the punch. It was a nice change of pace from all the other movies I have watched this year and it was fun to visit an old friend on the screen again with a new twist. I want to see it again just for Sox and want my own cat that can be my little personal R2D2 unit. 

Adults will get a kick out of it and certainly your kids will to. Just get ready to buy another Buzz action figure and possibly a Sox cat for Christmas this year.