Lightyear 3/10
I slept through the first 20 minutes or so, but I usually do that during afternoon screenings so it's not a criticism.
The time dilation was probably the best thing about this film, but without spoilering anything, the science about the different timeline was wonky, and the plot, in fact the whole film, didn't really make sense from that point on.
If you're gonna make a scifi movie, then you should at least get the science right, and if you don't have science or plot then you need character, and Buzz reminds me of what Clive Barker said about storytelling and how as you look back in time the great lovers stoop to sympathy and the great heroes become automatons; but here the process is in reverse, which is not surprising because since the franchise was taken over by Disney, it turned to shit.
Tldr: Buzz Lightyear is a space ranger. In fact, he's a pretty shit space ranger. Until he gets a crisis of conscience when he realizes how shit a space ranger he is and tries to redeem himself by being slightly less shit.
One one hand, it's a film about failure, about making mistakes, about recovery, resilience and gumption, so slightly more existential than your usual kid's film. But Buzz is a knucklehead who only "succeeds" by his buddies bailing him out and by falling with style. At its core, it's a paean to mediocrity, luck, incompetence and lowering expectations, so not really the kind of inspiration you want to give your kids, unless you want them to become executives at Disney.
But it serves as a good introduction to general relativity and the hyperspace graphics were pretty awesome. Oh yeah, and the kitten was cool, even though I usually dislike cats.
The full quote from Clive Barker:
Nothing ever begins.
There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any story springs.
The threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, and the tales that preceded that; though as the narrator's voice recedes the connections will seem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale told as if it were of its own making.
Thus the pagan will be sanctified, the tragic become laughable; great lovers will stoop to sentiment, and demons dwindle to clockwork toys. Nothing is fixed. In and out the shuttle goes, fact and fiction, mind and matter woven into patterns that may have only this in common: that hidden among them is a filigree that will with time become a world.
