Skip to main content

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. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ready Player One Review

What I liked: I bet all of the developers loved making this film, I saw so many video game and movie references in the background of scenes. I bet all the developers just inserted their favorites like the ninja turtles, a whole platoon of halo soldiers, and orcs. That it was a video game made it possible and exciting to have all kinds of absolutely random physics and logic defying things happen. Obviously, I loved the T. Rex and who would not enjoy seeing Mechagodzilla or a cyborg orc driving a monster truck? Early in the movie they made good use of the video game architecture in a way that reminded me a bit of secret rooms in super mario. The characters visit the world of the Shining, which was amazing and hilarious. I loved the variety of characters, vehicles and weapons that we get to see and it is more fun (at least for me) that they draw from more than strictly the 1980's. I also really liked the music, for the most part the selections were great for the scenes. The book was...

Fast and Furious 8 review

What I liked: This is the first Fast and Furious movie I have seen but I have watched a number of the trailers. They always teemed with absurdity. Now instead of a 3 minute trailer, I got to sit through an hour and a half of turbo powered sports cars saving the world. As you can imagine the list of things to like is quite long. The movie starts off strong with a car race in Havanah (I guess that US-Cuban relations are going really well if a FBI agent is having his honeymoon there). The reason for the car race was a bit complicated but essentially the main dude was trying to win back his cousin's car. In the course of the race he manages to light it on fire, explode it, and launch it into the ocean. But at least he won it back. I'm sure his cousin was very grateful. I also find it noteworthy that the race was 1 mile long and took 11 minutes to complete. The moral of this story is that while both racers are excellent at theatrics, they take safety seriously. After blowing up B...

Crazy Rich Asians

What I liked: One of the earliest scenes has a flurry of social media. I liked the way it was filmed and thought it was funny and effective. The best friend is remarkably well prepared for almost any eventuality. If she could fit her closet in a utility belt she would be a fashion batman. Without all the cool gadgets and fighting. Just clothes and accessories. Worst Batman ever. I liked her collection of outfits in her trunk. The whole family making dumplings together was surprisingly cute. Until it reminded me of the recent Pixar dumpling short . You can't unsee it now can you? Really, that short is this movie in about 5 minutes. So if you want to save your self some time... The mom is a very effective villain, I think she and Lady Tremaine would get along well. I liked the proposal scene. Of the whole movie this is the part the seems the most realistic. What I didn't: Ok even if we buy the "I just wanted to be a peasant and my true self with you" non-sense, unde...