Lightyear: Reviewers brand Disney animation ‘worst Pixar film’ as Toy Story spin-off polarises critics

Disney spin-off stars Chris Evans, Keke Palmer and Uzo Aduba

The first reviews for Lightyear, Disney’s animated Toy Story spin-off, have been published – but many of them are less than (inter)stellar.

Lightyear stars Chris Evans as space pilot Buzz Lightyear, a character who serves as the in-universe inspiration for the Buzz Lightyear figure voiced by Tim Allen in all four Toy Story films.

Also in the film are a number of side characters, including those voiced by Keke Palmer, James Brolin, Taika Waititi and Uzo Aduba.

Responses to Lightyear have been mixed. Some reviewers have praised the film’s animation and spirit, others have condemned it outright.

The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin described the film as “heartbreakingly crap”, writing on Twitter: “There’s a new worst Pixar film, and it’s not even close.”

In a one-star review, he wrote: “The problem with Pixar’s latest feature isn’t just that it’s the animation house’s dullest, dreariest, most spiritually empty to date. It’s that it fails even on its own painstakingly contrived open-goal terms.”

IndieWire’s David Ehrlich gave it a “C” grade, claiming that it was the “first Pixar movie since the start of the pandemic that feels like it only belongs on Disney Plus”.

“Bursting onto the big screen with huge ‘this project was announced during a shareholders meeting’ energy, Lightyear is exactly the kind of gratuitous property-mining that corporate streamers were invented to support,” he wrote.

(Pixar)

In Time, Stephanie Zacharek wrote: “[Bad guys] The Zurgs, with their handy mono-name, represent the simplest concept in the movie: everything else in Lightyear is overthought, and its plot is so hopelessly, desperately Christopher Nolan–style meta, that it caves in on itself.

“There’s a big plot twist, which the Zurgs in charge have forbidden me to reveal, that makes little sense in the scheme of the story. Worse yet, it causes us to care less about the main character, rather than more.”

Others, however, were warmer on the film, such as The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, who awarded it four stars. “The film just bounces along, zipping through its running time,” he wrote.

“Gosh, those folks at Pixar are good,” wrote Kevin Maher in The Times. “They’ve somehow managed to transform this latest (and fifth) movie instalment from the Toy Story universe into solidly engaging entertainment despite some huge and seemingly insuperable flaws.”

Lightyear is released in cinemas on 17 June.