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Lightyear


What I liked: The laser shield. It really shouldn't have taken them 60 years to come up with that plan. The moment Buzz realizes his elite team is not quite who he thought they were. The zap squad. The best I can tell is they are the special forces unit that does nothing besides run around yelling zap. That seems like exactly my level of military service. The tranquilizer dart. The seemingly correct use of time dilation, including "C." That Buzz was a stereotypical '50-'60s test pilot, complete with the deep distrust of computer calculated trajectories. The music accompanying Buzz's stirring speech. That Buzz and Cmd Hawthorne were just friends. The demolitions expert who was generally crotchety and disappointed to not get to blow everything up. 

What I didn't: The fundamental take home message of the movie is that it is better to work with other people than to insist on doing everything yourself. The message is itself sound. However, almost every example I side with the do it yourself Buzz. In the event of a military emergency probably a highly trained military person should not include untrained, unqualified civilians in the strike force. If you are piloting a spacecraft with the only helm, what conceivable job would you give someone who offered to help? The rookie does seem to get in the way and jeopardize everyone on the space ship. Also, I think there is a case to be made for Zurg's plan. Clearly it shouldn't be a unilateral decision, but their society could potentially be greatly benefited by that course. The movie used a lot of Buzz's lines from the original Toy Story. It was fun to hear the quotes but I like them better out of context. Similarly, many of the sound effects are the kinds of sounds kids would make if they were playing with toys like beep beep beep, or meow meow, and yes sadly zap zap zap zap. I acknowledge this ties it more closely to the Toy Story movie, but it is called Lightyear, so I don't know how much more explicit of a tie in you really need. Speaking of things we may not really need, do we actually need the backstory of the fictional history of an action figure in an already fictional movie? Since it is a play within a play essentially, do we treat it like there is an unreliable narrator? That could be more fun. They make a very big deal about losing the formula for their crystal solution. The thing has 4 ingredients and one of you is a computer, I'm pretty sure with minimal effort you could remember the formula. Finally, the cat. Why did we need the cat? Who designed that cat? what was the original purpose of the cat? Why did they think it needed all those random functions but not an extended battery life or enough memory to permanently store a 4 ingredient formula?

Who should watch this? The kids in the theater seemed to like it a lot. They also inexplicably liked the cat. So, I guess children inclined to like robotic cats. 

Would I watch it again? Once was enough. 

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