When I first saw that a special movie for 'Toy Story's Buzz Lightyear was on its way out, I couldn't help but feel curious as to what it would entail. I kind of figured that it might involve Buzz being separated from the rest of the gang and having to do his own crazy adventure to get home (as the general 'Toy Story' formula entails). Instead, Pixar decided to introduce us to the film that inspired the Buzz Lightyear toy that Andy loves so much. It even says "this is that movie" right before everything starts. We meet Buzz Lightyear (Chris Evans) of Star Command, along with his commanding officer, best friend, and a rather progressive character, Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba). In exploring the habitable planet of T'Kani Prime with their rookie recruit, Featheringhamstan (Bill Hader), they find hostile lifeforms. In an effort to escape, along with a crew for colonization, the ship ends up malfunctioning and crashing, marooning them. After a year of working together, a colony lives with the basics under a protective dome while Buzz volunteers to test hyperspace fuel - a key element in their escape from the planet. Upon the first four-minute test of the hyperspace fuel, Buzz finds himself back on T'Kani Prime four years after his launch due to time dilation. Buzz, feeling ultimately responsible for their being there, tests the fuel again and again with the research help of his robotic cat, SOX (Peter Sohn). Eventually, the testing brings Buzz a whole 62 years into the future, and fuel testing is soon scrapped on the orders of Buzz's new commanding officer, Commander Burnside (Isiah Whitlock Jr.). The catch - SOX only just perfected the fuel, so of course, Buzz sneaks away to actually succeed in the test and return a whole 22 years later. I know it sounds a lot like I'm going through the whole movie, but that's really all just the setup. To be perfectly honest, I think I liked this first act the most. It's reminiscent of 'Interstellar' where the time dilation means missing so much, and it does manage to get a little emotional with it. It's almost like watching a kid-friendly episode of 'Black Mirror'. Anyway, once we get to this 22 years later deal, we find that the planet has been all but taken over by "Zyclops" (an army of robots who serve the evil Emperor Zurg). Thankfully the protective dome still holds, but it's up to Buzz to get them to stop attacking altogether. With the help of a scrappy team of three colony defence soldiers; Izzy (Keke Palmer), Alisha's granddaughter; Darby Steel (Dale Soules), a recently paroled senior; and Mo Morrison (Taika Waititi), a naive, perpetual rookie, the team plans to pull a 'Star Wars' and attack Zurg's ship in order to make the Zyclops' malfunction so they can be taken out. That's about as far into spoiler territory as I'm willing to get, but the rest of the story has a decent surprise or two up its sleeve - only just decent though, not necessarily good or surprising. All in all, once Buzz comes back after the 22 years things do end up getting pretty simple, and it's just an average space adventure. That being said, my only real criticisms lie in the basic plot points and Zurg seemingly having not much of a real motivation for what he's doing other than mining fuel. That brings me to my next criticism being that I can't totally buy that this is Andy's favourite movie. I'm not saying it can't be, but it does seem like a lot for a pre-adolescent kid to understand. However, having no kids of my own and only going by personal experience 30+ years ago, I admit that I could be way off here. I'd frankly be most curious to hear what kids have to say about this more than adults. Personally speaking, I find it extremely middle-ground. It's much weaker than any of the actual 'Toy Story' movies, but I can say with confidence that there are worse Pixar titles out there. For me, this is on the level of something like 'Cars 3' - it's definitely a fun time, but I can see where people are coming from with their criticisms. Although I will say that Chris Evans doing the voice of Buzz doesn't exactly hurt my feelings like it is with so many. I see him as voicing the live-action actor within the 'Toy Story' universe who's portraying Buzz rather than Buzz, himself. But hey, purists are purists. Anyway, it's a good time, but only really necessary if you wanna see Buzz Lightyear's origin story. 3/5
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Pixar had this point in time where they got a little sequel-happy, despite the odd original title. Sometimes it seemed like a cash-in, but most of the time these sequels had something a little new to say. 'Finding Dory' ultimately ended up being the Pixar sequel no one really seemed to know they wanted until it actually became a thing - a whole thirteen years after its predecessor, making it the biggest gap between Pixar sequels at the time (prior to the fourteen-year gap of the 'Incredibles' films). It's interesting to note how beloved a film 'Finding Nemo' was. It earned Pixar its first Best Animated Feature Oscar, it was experimental with its variety of animation, and it was a fun adventure story one could easily recommend as a family flick. The thing was, speaking for myself, I always considered it a sort of one-off, and the idea of 'Finding Dory' actually frustrated me. Why? Because there was still no hint of an 'Incredibles II' quite yet, and I strongly considered 'The Incredibles' to be the Pixar title most worthy of a sequel (save for perhaps the 'Toy Story' series). Nevertheless, I decided to check it out, and was actually pleasantly surprised. While this takes the concept of 'Cars 2' of all things (in as much as the comedy relief from first film being the sequel's lead), this actually did something with it, and takes a good, broad look at what it's like to live with a mental health issue. Of course, in Dory's case, we all know it as her short-term memory loss. The same short-term memory loss that made us laugh in 'Finding Nemo', however, is actually played on a somewhat more serious level here. The film begins with a young Dory (Sloane Murray) and her parents, Charlie (Eugene Levy) and Jenny (Diane Keaton) dealing with her short-term memory loss in a very loving, caring way. One day, however, Dory finds herself separated from her parents. With that comes a pretty sad opening sequence where Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) literally grows up looking for her parents. Eventually, she bumps into Marlin (Albert Brooks), and they begin the events of the first film. In 'Finding Nemo', Dory mentions her family, says "hm, where are they?...", and the audience laughs because it's played as a gag. Here, we're even reminded of that gag, and things suddenly take a whole new spin; in my opinion, one of the most clever Pixar call-backs I've seen yet. Anyway, 'Finding Dory' takes place a year after 'Finding Nemo'. At this point, Dory has pretty much forgotten all about her parents, and has a whole new life with Marlin and Nemo (Hayden Rolence). One day, during a school field trip, Dory is helping out when something suddenly jogs her memory about looking for her parents. She implores Marlin and Nemo to help her out with it, especially since she has her memory loss, and with that, they almost too easily head to California by way of riding the current with Crush (Andrew Stanton) from the previous film. Here, they are lead to a public Aquarium where Sigourney Weaver's voice (playing herself) is the guide for visitors. It turns out, this is where Dory is from, but in her excitement she gets separated from Marlin and Nemo Eventually, Dory does get help from an octopus named Hank (Ed O'Neill) who makes a deal with her, a whale shark named Destiny (Kaitlin Olson) who remembers her, and Destiny's neighbouring beluga whale, Bailey (Ty Burrell). With Dory's adventure, it shows that even at our worst when it comes to whatever mental health problem we're dealing with, we can persevere. There's actually a few moments here when we see her cope with things rather than have it be an element of humour. That said, I wouldn't suggest that 'Finding Nemo' was ever really making fun of things so much as suggesting there's a bit of a hidden side to Dory. Speaking for myself, she actually turns out to be that Pixar character I've always wanted to hear the story on, but, as mentioned before, didn't realize it. One could even say I forgot about it, which is pretty interesting to think about. Personally, I tend to appreciate 'Nemo' a bit more, mostly due to the variety of animation techniques of the time, along with a solid story and likable characters. However, I would definitely consider this a very worthy sequel, and might recommend a back-to-back viewing to newcomers. This one wasn't up for any Oscars, ultimately losing out to 'Zootopia', but when I look at the films in that category that year, it was a challenge - 2016 was a very good year for animation! I would still recommend this pretty strongly to 'Finding Nemo' fans who haven't checked it out yet. This is Pixar taking the humour from the first film and turning it on its head while maintaining its own somewhat different sense of humour. I don't know that I'd say it's Pixar being brilliant, but it's certainly Pixar being clever with things they had to work with. 4/5 |
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