Date: Saturday, June 25 2022
Time: 11am
Party: 3 (my mom, sister and I)
My sister had wanted to go to the movies for something she wanted me to see for ages. And she enjoyed this movie.
My mom and I, not quite as much.
According to the opening slate, this was Andy’s favorite movie back in 1995 and why he and so many kids wanted Buzz Lightyear toys.
For the target audience, I think the movie did all right. There was one other family in the theater with us and the kids were into it. And my sister is very much a kid at heart even in her 30s.
Without going into too much detail, I thought this movie was ok.
The premise is about a group of space voyagers (including a team of space rangers) getting marooned on a foreign planet and Buzz is determined to complete their mission to get off it.
Going into a bit more detail, his determination to uphold the space ranger code (“always complete the mission”) that it becomes an obsession… it reaches a point where everyone else has built lives for themselves on this planet except for him.
In true to form filmmaking, this can only mean one thing- a montage.
Typically, montages happen midway through a movie or somewhere during the third act after a falling out from a misunderstanding… they’re also used to extend the movie’s runtime. If I’d experienced a montage in the first third of a movie on a previous occasion, I can’t remember it. All I do know for this particular case, I get why they chose this route. I just didn’t find it exciting. You also gotta wonder- when does it stop being about the mission and becomes more wanting to atone for past mistakes?
Our one view into the passage of time is through Buzz’s colleague Hawthorne (played brilliantly by Uzo Aduba of OITNB fame). She goes from engaged to married, seeing her son graduate college until she’s no longer there to greet him when he returns…
Because the trials involve trying to reach hyperspace, Buzz ages 4 minutes per mission while everyone else ages 4 YEARS. Aside from Hawthorne and his emotional support robot cat, Sox, it’s a lonely existence.
….
Quick aside- some critics have attacked this movie because Hawthorne is a lesbian and they show her married to another woman… it’s just a minute of screen time and somehow that kills the whole movie for some people?
First off- THAT is the dealbreaker that resulted in this being the least successful Pixar movie ever?
Personally I think the movie has some other problems that are a lot bigger than that.
Like some of the writing…
And second- there’s been this constant struggle over the past several years between giving all walks of people adequate representation in the media and pushing agendas. Some people aren’t going to be happy no matter what, but surely there’s a way to offer representation where it doesn’t come off as forced… some day, someone needs to figure it out how to strike that balance.
The one question I have left to ask on this topic (that I’m willing to publish on a public forum)…
how did Hawthorne and her partner conceive in the first place? Did they figure out how to do IVF on a foreign planet sometime during Buzz’s absence? I mean, I guess if Matt Damon can grow plants on Mars in “the Martian,” anything’s possible.
…
Fast forward even further into the future, a new enemy emerges… veterans of the Toy Story franchise (and the short lived animated series “Buzz Lightyear of Star Command”) will recognize the villain immediately.
Thanks to Sox, Buzz now has the perfect formula of fuel to reach hyperspace. Bad news- enemy forces have made it impossible to reach “the turnip” (his nickname for their spaceship… haha, makes me think of how the protagonists in the Pikmin series called the Pikmin ship “the onion”).
Against his reservations (cuz he’s so used to working on his own), he teams up with Hawthorne’s granddaughter Izzy (Keke Palmer has come a long way since playing spelling bee hopeful Akeelah - she’s really funny in this role) and her ragtag team of recruits. Darby was a former convict who’d since been forbidden to handle weapons and Mo is so neurotic he keeps wanting to give up or surrender.
Much of the film focuses on a comedy of errors, some super hilarious and others not so much. There’s a ridiculous amount of “one step forward and two steps back”… I know the space program had a lot of trial and error to get us to the moon, but still. Even with the jokes and various quirks from the characters, I felt a little deprived of enjoyment.
Then the big reveal of the bad guy’s true identity… if you look at the whole picture, yeah, it kinda makes sense. But I found it such a turnoff, something like what they did with Quill’s father in the second “guardians of the galaxy” movie would’ve been better and I’m still not over that either.
For some positives, Sox is another great addition to Disney’s league of cute animal sidekicks. The moment you meet him, you know he’ll steal every scene he’s in the moment he opens his mouth. I mean, he’s a talking cat with robot quirks and a wry humor with perfect timing- what’s not to love? (I also love his name cuz I use it [or Mittens] whenever I see stray cats with white paws)
As someone who grew up with Tim Allen playing Buzz Lightyear (he’s still awesome by the way), Chris Evans did such a great job taking over for the role I barely noticed the difference.
Whether this recast happened because of politics, don’t know/don’t care. In a way, it does kinda make sense… action figures based on movie characters rarely include sound bites from the original actor. (So much money would go to paying them royalties that manufacturers would actually lose money…)
There’s a lot of funny references to earlier forms of technology… if you grew up with things like I.V.A.N. the GPS, it’ll give you a good laugh.
As is the case with a lot of movies, watch out for running gags because there’s a good chance a big payoff will be coming later. And of course a bunch of little references to the original Toy Story movie, including the story behind his signature catchphrase.
Also- space food is kinda gross. Between the TV dinners and the sandwiches with the meat on the outside… bleck!
Despite the movie not being the best rollercoaster with all the ups and downs, it does have some good messages about perseverance… and some others I won’t go into because it could give away some crucial plot points
Grade- B
Time: 11am
Party: 3 (my mom, sister and I)
Director: Angus MacLane
Writers: Angus MacLane, Matthew Aldrich, Jason Headley
Composer: Michael Giacchino
Cast:
Buzz Lightyear- Chris Evans
Alisha Hawthorne- Uzo Aduba
Diaz- Efren Ramirez
Burnside- Isiah Whitlock Jr.
Izzy Hawthorne- Keke Palmer
Mo Morrison- Taika Waititi
Darby Steel- Dale Soules
Sox- Peter Sohn
Emperor Zurg- James Brolin
Review:
Review:
My sister had wanted to go to the movies for something she wanted me to see for ages. And she enjoyed this movie.
My mom and I, not quite as much.
According to the opening slate, this was Andy’s favorite movie back in 1995 and why he and so many kids wanted Buzz Lightyear toys.
For the target audience, I think the movie did all right. There was one other family in the theater with us and the kids were into it. And my sister is very much a kid at heart even in her 30s.
Without going into too much detail, I thought this movie was ok.
The premise is about a group of space voyagers (including a team of space rangers) getting marooned on a foreign planet and Buzz is determined to complete their mission to get off it.
Going into a bit more detail, his determination to uphold the space ranger code (“always complete the mission”) that it becomes an obsession… it reaches a point where everyone else has built lives for themselves on this planet except for him.
In true to form filmmaking, this can only mean one thing- a montage.
Typically, montages happen midway through a movie or somewhere during the third act after a falling out from a misunderstanding… they’re also used to extend the movie’s runtime. If I’d experienced a montage in the first third of a movie on a previous occasion, I can’t remember it. All I do know for this particular case, I get why they chose this route. I just didn’t find it exciting. You also gotta wonder- when does it stop being about the mission and becomes more wanting to atone for past mistakes?
Our one view into the passage of time is through Buzz’s colleague Hawthorne (played brilliantly by Uzo Aduba of OITNB fame). She goes from engaged to married, seeing her son graduate college until she’s no longer there to greet him when he returns…
Because the trials involve trying to reach hyperspace, Buzz ages 4 minutes per mission while everyone else ages 4 YEARS. Aside from Hawthorne and his emotional support robot cat, Sox, it’s a lonely existence.
….
Quick aside- some critics have attacked this movie because Hawthorne is a lesbian and they show her married to another woman… it’s just a minute of screen time and somehow that kills the whole movie for some people?
First off- THAT is the dealbreaker that resulted in this being the least successful Pixar movie ever?
Personally I think the movie has some other problems that are a lot bigger than that.
Like some of the writing…
And second- there’s been this constant struggle over the past several years between giving all walks of people adequate representation in the media and pushing agendas. Some people aren’t going to be happy no matter what, but surely there’s a way to offer representation where it doesn’t come off as forced… some day, someone needs to figure it out how to strike that balance.
The one question I have left to ask on this topic (that I’m willing to publish on a public forum)…
how did Hawthorne and her partner conceive in the first place? Did they figure out how to do IVF on a foreign planet sometime during Buzz’s absence? I mean, I guess if Matt Damon can grow plants on Mars in “the Martian,” anything’s possible.
…
Fast forward even further into the future, a new enemy emerges… veterans of the Toy Story franchise (and the short lived animated series “Buzz Lightyear of Star Command”) will recognize the villain immediately.
Thanks to Sox, Buzz now has the perfect formula of fuel to reach hyperspace. Bad news- enemy forces have made it impossible to reach “the turnip” (his nickname for their spaceship… haha, makes me think of how the protagonists in the Pikmin series called the Pikmin ship “the onion”).
Against his reservations (cuz he’s so used to working on his own), he teams up with Hawthorne’s granddaughter Izzy (Keke Palmer has come a long way since playing spelling bee hopeful Akeelah - she’s really funny in this role) and her ragtag team of recruits. Darby was a former convict who’d since been forbidden to handle weapons and Mo is so neurotic he keeps wanting to give up or surrender.
Much of the film focuses on a comedy of errors, some super hilarious and others not so much. There’s a ridiculous amount of “one step forward and two steps back”… I know the space program had a lot of trial and error to get us to the moon, but still. Even with the jokes and various quirks from the characters, I felt a little deprived of enjoyment.
Then the big reveal of the bad guy’s true identity… if you look at the whole picture, yeah, it kinda makes sense. But I found it such a turnoff, something like what they did with Quill’s father in the second “guardians of the galaxy” movie would’ve been better and I’m still not over that either.
For some positives, Sox is another great addition to Disney’s league of cute animal sidekicks. The moment you meet him, you know he’ll steal every scene he’s in the moment he opens his mouth. I mean, he’s a talking cat with robot quirks and a wry humor with perfect timing- what’s not to love? (I also love his name cuz I use it [or Mittens] whenever I see stray cats with white paws)
As someone who grew up with Tim Allen playing Buzz Lightyear (he’s still awesome by the way), Chris Evans did such a great job taking over for the role I barely noticed the difference.
Whether this recast happened because of politics, don’t know/don’t care. In a way, it does kinda make sense… action figures based on movie characters rarely include sound bites from the original actor. (So much money would go to paying them royalties that manufacturers would actually lose money…)
There’s a lot of funny references to earlier forms of technology… if you grew up with things like I.V.A.N. the GPS, it’ll give you a good laugh.
As is the case with a lot of movies, watch out for running gags because there’s a good chance a big payoff will be coming later. And of course a bunch of little references to the original Toy Story movie, including the story behind his signature catchphrase.
Also- space food is kinda gross. Between the TV dinners and the sandwiches with the meat on the outside… bleck!
Despite the movie not being the best rollercoaster with all the ups and downs, it does have some good messages about perseverance… and some others I won’t go into because it could give away some crucial plot points
Grade- B
***
And if anyone cares, these were the trailers that showed. A bunch we'd seen a bunch of times already so there's no point fleshing them out again.
Minions, Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank, DC League of Super-Pets, and the latest Thor movie... if we continue going to the movies, we'll probably see these trailers a billion more times.
Two new ones oddly go hand in hand.
The long-awaited Avatar sequel (subtitled "Way of Water") is coming this December. The trailer was a lot of scenery and maybe one line of dialogue... but seriously, it's Avatar. The visual effects and escapism sell itself. This one's gonna be exciting to see on the big screen.
Right after it, the upcoming Thanksgiving weekend Disney movie- Strange World... which felt like a mix of the worlds of "Avatar" and "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs." In other words, one of those movies where my dad says the people who made it were on drugs.
This time, he might actually have a point...
It was only maybe 18 minutes of trailers, but one of the kids in the audience asked when they showed the Disney screen "is the movie finally starting? Finally!"
Pretty much summed it up right there.
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