26. Lightyear

Admittedly, I’m probably more charitable to Pixar’s attempt to make a “movie within a movie” than the average viewer, but Lightyear’s biggest problem isn’t that it’s not an interesting thought experiment in the Toy Story universe; it’s that it’s dreadfully dull. I do like the beginning and end of this movie. Chris Evans puts on his best not-Captain-America voice to give us a pretty great portrayal of a duty-bound space ranger who is so fixated on protecting people in the abstract that he forgets to care for flesh and blood people in his life. Lightyear begins with its titular hero repeatedly subjecting himself to a time-dilating space trip in an effort to help save a marooned space colony. He literally blinks his life away trying to fix one fuck up, and then faces a living manifestation of his obsession in the closing act. The beginning and end of Lightyear form a really tight full-circle moment that I found truly satisfying, and if all the stuff in the middle were half as compelling as the film’s foundations, it could have been one of the studio’s greats. Unfortunately, it’s not. Lightyear is surprisingly dreary, even when it has characters as likable as Keke Palmer’s spritely space ranger Izzy and the merchandise-ready robot cat Sox. As interesting as it is to see Pixar lean into a more serious tone with high stakes, Lightyear is almost entirely devoid of joy. — KS