Review: Disney-Pixar’s “Toy Story” spinoff has no reason to exist, but Chris Evans does his best

2 stars. 1 hour 45 minutes. Rated PG. In theaters June 17.

“Lightyear,” Disney-Pixar’s first feature-length “Toy Story” spin-off, is so streamlined it’s barely there. That’s not always a bad thing in this brisk animated adventure, which sees Chris Evans essentially replacing Tim Allen as the voice of Space Ranger Buzz Lightyear.

But when it comes to memorable themes or performances, it’s unbearably light. The movie’s concept is simple: in the “Toy Story” universe, it’s the film that inspired Buzz Lightyear the toy, which Tim Allen gruffly voiced over the last four movies since 1995, and which “Toy Story’s” human protagonist, Andy, both covets and outgrows.

I’m a much bigger fan of Evans than Allen, but Allen is a gushing font of personality compared to Evans here. The logic behind the direction may have been to button him up a bit before rebooting him, but it backfires by making the first half of the movie (at least) into a situation where the main character is so disconnected and arrogant you don’t really care what happens to him.

The animating concept doesn’t matter past the opening card, nor do the endlessly recycled sci-fi trappings, which are at least rendered with an impressive amount of detail and respect for their influences — ranging from “2001: A Space Odyssey” (of course) to Pixar’s own “Wall-E.” Like most Pixar productions, it’s a nonstop visual feast, but it’s not really about its genre.

Lightyear opens with our hero piloting an ark of sorts through the cosmos and detouring, wrongly, to an alien planet 4.2 million light years from Earth. There, he and his hundreds of fellow Space Rangers and scientists (and, apparently, unending supplies) are marooned by a piloting mistake Lightyear makes in a moment of crisis.

The square-jawed, seemingly humorless Lightyear then goes back in time to prevent the crash from ever happening, with predictable complications, and eventually runs up against Zurg (James Brolin) and his army of evil robots. The plot is pure Star Trek, particularly with the focus on dialogue-heavy character development and the tension between the Space Rangers peacekeeping-and-exploration charter (modeled on the United Federation of Planets), and the more militaristic factions within their ranks, including the stern Commander Burnside (Isiah Whitlock Jr.).

Alisha Hawethorne (Uzo Aduba), Lightyear’s commander and best friend, and her daughter Izzy (Keke Palmer) at least have some agency in Lightyear’s schemes. But like all the characters — even the villains — they mostly stand back and let him splash in his puddles. At least Disney reinstated the movie’s same-sex kiss after protests from within Pixar, despite it losing play in some international markets, according to reports.