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Elvis ebert12/26/2023 Izzy offers to assist and volunteers her team of amateurs, ex-con/bomb expert Darby Steel ( Dale Soules) and Mo Morrison ( Taika Waititi). Unfortunately, he’s on the outs with Commander Burnside (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) the military man who used to run things, and must retrieve the turnip ship without any skilled help. Buzz sees a new shot at getting everyone off the planet. She’s inhabiting the latest iteration of their home planet, one that’s full of hostile robots who are under the control of the suspicious “Zurg” space ship. Hawthorne’s message is delivered to Buzz by her daughter, Izzy ( Keke Palmer). By this time, Hawthorne has passed on, leaving him a recorded message that Aduba delivers with such bittersweet beauty that there were audible sniffles at my screening. When he finally achieves hyperspace, it costs him 22 more years. “Lightyear” represents much of this repeated passage of time in a montage scored by Michael Giacchino it’s reminiscent of the opening scene in “ Up.” Buzz’s unwillingness to accept failure keeps him from celebrating the marriage of Hawthorne and her girlfriend, the birth of their daughter, and far too many in-jokes and experiences for him to count. Everyone gets older while he stays the same age. The most important thing to know is that every failed attempt to reach his goal results in Buzz missing four years of life back home. Guilt-ridden, Buzz makes it his mission to discover an energy source that will help them achieve hyperspace and get off the planet. The turnip-shaped ship he’s flying crashes, marooning everyone on a hostile planet filled with killer vines and bugs. This gets him in a heap of trouble when he disregards the advice of both his team and his ship’s autopilot navigator I.V.A.N. Buzz Lightyear, the movie character, has the same penchant for being stubborn and following his own path that his toy did. By that rationale, the makers of “Lightyear” can sue the makers of “Toy Story” for stealing it.īut I digress. Before each adventure, the duo touch fingers and yell “To infinity and beyond!” which I assume would have been the tagline for this film when Andy saw it. Hawthorne is a Black woman, something you don’t often see in space movies despite all that work they did for NASA in “ Hidden Figures.” She constantly mocks Buzz’s penchant for “monologuing,” that is, recording the Shatner-like captain’s log into that device on his arm. They share in-jokes and memories of missions past. Buzz is partnered with Alisha Hawthorne ( Uzo Aduba), his best friend. “Lightyear” begins with a special mission for space rangers. After seeing “Lightyear,” I was full of even more questions, such as, “Would Andy’s Mom have allowed a toy version of Buzz’s partner in her house?” And, “Come on, Andy! Why didn’t you ask your Mom for a toy version of Buzz’s cat?!” At least this time, the toy came from a contemporary reference for the kid. Which begged the question as to why the Hell a millennial like Andy would want him. If you recall, “ Toy Story 2” revealed that the Woody toy was originally a tie-in to a television show from the 1950s. I won’t fault suspicious viewers who think this sounds like a bunch of cash-grabbing malarkey, but I should point out that this retrofitting is not without Pixar precedent.
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