Rating: PG | Runtime: 105 minutes
Release Date: June 17th, 2022 (USA)
Studio: Pixar Animation Studios / Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Director(s): Angus MacLane
Writer(s): Jason Headley & Angus MacLane / Angus MacLane, Matthew Aldrich & Jason Headley (story)

That was utterly terrifying and I regret having joined you.

Whether Disney/Pixar could have done better marketing Lightyear before people went to theaters and saw the opening text to explain what it was they were doing with this film isn’t up for question. They should have. The question we must ask is whether Lightyear succeeds at being the fun, 90s-era sci-fi adventure they set out to create.

Because that’s what the Star Trek meets Star Wars pastiche of this fictitious world always was. Andy in Toy Story had a toy based on his favorite character from his favorite film. Just like someone his age would watch Back to the Future or Jurassic Park, he watched Buzz Lightyear (Chris Evans) accidentally maroon his ship on a hostile planet only to spend decades trying to get back home.

It’s honestly everything I would have asked for out of the experiment tasked to director Angus MacLane, co-writer Jason Headley, and the rest of the “braintrust” at Pixar. Buzz is everything you would think he would be when extrapolated from the abridged version of the character that Tim Allen has voiced as a toy since 1995. He uses the catchphrases in context. His demeanor and code have true intergalactic stakes to bounce off.

He’s exactly what you get from a Captain Kirk-archetype who’s ready and willing to risk his life and ignore direct orders to be the hero when no one else will. It just so happens that doing so also means losing four years with the people he loves (namely his best friend and commander Alisha Hawthrone, as voiced by Uzo Aduba) every time he attempts another four-minute test run of the necessary hyperdrive crystalline fuel.

So, it’s no surprise that his latest return flight finds everything he knew gone and the city built in his absence (once everyone decides it’s okay to just stay while Buzz continues his Sisyphean quest to complete the mission he failed) overrun by laser-shooting robots under the power of Zurg (James Brolin).

Nor is it surprising that his lone wolf will find himself needing to relearn how to play nice considering he’ll never be able to save the day alone. Whether Alisha’s astrophobic granddaughter (Keke Palmer’s Izzy), her anxious (Taika Waititi’s Mo) and hostile (Dale Soules’ Darby) comrades, or Buzz’s robotic therapy cat (Peter Sohn’s SOX) are the team he’d have picked to be by his side is irrelevant. They’re all he has and, ultimately, all he needs.

I had a great time with these characters and the obvious 90s-era action aesthetic straight down to the overly-serious opening studio credits. Sohn is a delight. Isiah Whitlock Jr. is inspired casting for the commander who wants to ground Buzz. And Evans and Palmer are everything you’d want from an odd couple pairing, more alike than they’d initially admit, generations apart.

Some of the jokes are top-notch (meat-bread-meat, white noise, etc.) and the fight sequences are exciting to go along with their obvious comedic beats. This isn’t Toy Story. Nor should it be. It’s not full-on satire like Spaceballs or Galaxy Quest either. Lightyear is an approximation of what an energetic kid in the mid-90s would have glommed onto. It’s a nostalgia bomb and it works.

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Buzz (voice of Chris Evanscan’t do it alone—he shares space with a dutiful robot companion cat called Sox (voice of Peter Sohn) © 2022 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.