Waited as the white wolf by a whole generation bottled by Toy Story, Buzz light was a project all the more exciting: to discover the Man behind the legend of the toy with the green scapandre and the violet hood. A sweet mix of nostalgia combined with the desire to offer something else to an audience who had now passed the bar of thirty years since the first flights of the Pixar studio, propelled by the phenomenon Toy Story 1995 Seeing the man behind the tip of plastic that dipped the screen of the first animation films entirely made by computer sounded like a joyous idea. Jurassic Park had given life to the dinosaurs, Pixar would awaken the soul of our childhood. 27 years later, what remains of space storage?
Buzz the Light to the rescue...
Disney (who bought Pixar in 2006) therefore entrusted the task to the director Angus MacLane to revive the legend. The film immediately begins with this meta side by offering us to discover the true story of the most famous ranger of space, the story that would inspire a whole bunch of short panties in 1995 and today in bermudas, filled with heat. Presented in preview at Annecy, the room was full and Disney had even raised the thermometer by offering a wide interactive game before the screening of the session, the opportunity to fill the pif against Paris, New York and Sydney by joyfully showing his armpits to hold his arms on the bright side on an improvised rhythm game for the launch. A nice moment that reminds us that cinema is also about sharing and common property.
Following the triumph of the Annecian public, it was therefore in the moisturizer and the lymphatic vapors that the session began joyfully. We discover Buzz who has undergone a successful facade ravage to look like the toy while remaining human. Following a shipwreck on a hostile planet (located at 4.2 million light-years away from planet Earth), Buzz assumed responsibility for his intrepidity and set out to bring the colony home. Only flat, the mothership module, some kind of crystal, suffered extensive damage and Buzz will have to find a way to recharge it.
Space oddity
As Buzz embarks on a voyage with an extra ship around the sun to recharge the crystal, he discovers that the time he spent in hyperspace lasts four years on the colonized planet. It is therefore a form of race against the clock that Buzz is subjected, his friend and the whole colony aging at once to each getaway. Unfortunately, this first part is a bit circumspect, and it spreads in length without taking the time to pose its characters. We feel that Pixar is trying to move us, but the process is particularly awkward. Put the plough before the oxen and deprive us of certain protagonists so quickly does not work when we were presented a few minutes ago, except in masterpieces like The Last of Us where writing is a completely different level.
Pixar abuses plans where the eyes of the kids open like a flower watching Buzz. The smile never leaves faces, even in more perilous moments. There is nothing more awkward than suggesting to the viewer when he must feel something when nothing happens on the screen. If in Jurassic Park Spielberg camps the camera on Sam Neil and Laura Dern, the eyes shimmered, it's to make the sauce better when we see the dinosaurs for the first time. But here nothing justifies this precalculated spread of emotions without ever considering the spectator's intelligence. We smile because we have to smile, don't!
Deprived of one of his main supporters, Buzz will therefore have to carry out his mission alone... until he meets a band of nickel-plated feet: reckless (but incapable) young recruits and Sox, a robot cat that acts as a gag throughout the film. Zurg and his robot army are finally complicating Buzz's mission. The last child from Pixar struggles to raise his stakes. Robots only intervene late in the film and present no threat or originality.
Towards Infinity and Beyond (from boredom)
It's unfortunate, but Buzz It would be unfair to incriminate its public character. Other Pixar films had a double level of systematic reading. In other films intended for open audiences such as Dark Crystal, the irruption of the Skekses immediately imposed respect for example. But here everything seems smooth and flat. Neither heroes nor enemies seem to be involved in this adventure that looks far too much like a bad side-hunting video game quest.
Worse still, only three types of enemies will obstruct Buzz and say that confrontations are as rare as insipid. A few stings, insects and robots... and that's it. More was expected of a film that would have done better to lurk on the side of the space opera. Even Buzz throws his gun behind him right from the beginning of the film after shooting three shots, as if he himself returned the jersey...
Question of variety, Angus MacLane is too mischievous and rushes into the pitfall of locking us between endless grey corridors, rather than enjoying new biomes that could probably be proposed by a planet of this order. Between uninspired writing, the few funny jokes with Sox but which unfortunately shoot in length and bluish without an ounce of charisma, the film slips very quickly on the slope of boredom and disappointment. There is no tension that wears the plot or great spectacle to compensate.
The choreographies of the rare struggles lack breath. And even the sound design remains very erased, due to too overwhelming orchestral music. Buzz is a film that struggles to convince even more when one emerges from the presentations of Spiderman Across the Spider-verse and Potted Cat 2, both more daring than the last Pixar. Lack of ambition or control film? Buzz did not know how to revive the flame of a universe that might have been better left alone.
Video review of Buzz
Buzz trailer
[...] But there is nothing more to expect from the franchise after the second part. The same goes for Buzz, who really sucked at Pixar. Far from being a bad film, the [...]