Lightyear was advertised as a large-scale space epic that would distinguish itself from the Pixar movies that came before. It was Pixar’s grand return to theaters, and their first film that was filmed specifically for IMAX. But after I finished watching Lightyear, I couldn’t help but laugh. It wasn’t because the film was bad, or because of how fun the experience was. It was a laugh borne from shock, really. After how big Lightyear was advertised to be, I was bewildered. I had just seen Lightyear. That was it.

Now, as I stated earlier, Lightyear is by no means a shoddy film. It has excellent animation (as expected from Pixar), a splendid score from Michael Giacchino, some really fun moments (Sox is the MVP), and is just generally not the worst way to spend a Friday night. But it’s difficult for me to find much else to praise about it. Maybe it’s just the burden of the Pixar pedigree, but almost everything about this film is so painfully average and tailored to kids that it feels wrong to highlight anything. It’s just serviceable through and through.

The story is actually kind of interesting for the first 20 minutes. Nothing exceptional, but it had my attention. There is a sequence in particular that I thought was quite well-done. But after that, the plot gets generic very quickly. We follow Buzz (Chris Evans) and a group of misfits as they work together to defeat a robot army and free a planet. Almost every major plot point boils down to “let’s do this thing so we can do this thing because this other thing is right here/1 mile away/can be done by Sox,” and boy, does it get old. The villain also makes absolutely no sense, but I give the screenwriters props for doing something different.

My biggest problem with Lightyear, however, has to be the characters. Aside from Sox (Peter Sohn), who is consistently hilarious, our main characters range from boring to annoying. They all have a shtick, and you can be sure that they will never do anything beyond that. Buzz wants to do everything himself, Mo (Taika Waititi) is clumsy and has a very unsubtle running joke with a pen, Darby (Dale Soules) is a grouchy ex-convict, and so on and so forth. Izzy (Keke Palmer) is the best of our non-Sox characters, as it felt like she had more to her character than the others did. However, I found myself irritated by everyone else constantly. Occasionally they have good jokes, but the dialogue is so on-the-nose that it eventually became somewhat infuriating for me.

Now, with all that being said, Lightyear is not a film that was made for me. While I love the Toy Story franchise, I was never excited for this. I’m also not the target audience. Lightyear is very much for young kids, and for what it’s worth, I think they’ll have a blast. The jokes feel very kid-oriented, the plot is simple enough to follow, the characters are cute, and the movie looks great. In my humble opinion, Lightyear isn’t anything more than a cute, well-animated movie that kids will love. But it doesn’t have to be more. For what it is, it’s fine. If you were already uninterested in Lightyear, don’t bother seeing it. But hey, if you wanted to go watch it before, still give it a shot! Just don’t go in expecting anything of the usual Pixar caliber.

5.5/10