1992 Directed by Barry Levinson
Leslie Zevo is a fun-loving inventor who must save his late father's toy factory from his evil uncle, Leland, a war-mongering general who rules the operation with an iron fist and builds weapons disguised as toys.
The main sin is that it isn't weird or demented enough (for a brief moment it shows signs of being sublimely strange); it's as if a bunch of studio suits tried to groupthink 'odd' and 'creative' and this is all they could muster.
It's other sins are:
an excessive run time,
an inappropriate love scene,
a virulently dated and awful soundtrack,
a half-finished production design,
the story,
and the resolution.
Cogently, flawlessly Dante-esque satirical look at War in the age of Consumerism (note my Capital Letters: I Mean Business). State-subsidized war morphing into consumerism may register as overly simplistic and didactic, but in fact both the military and the toy manufacturers are fucking capitalist tools, a brilliant insight. Construction-tank metal becomes toy-metal plastic (THEY ARE NOT THE SAME), the catalyst for a generation of youth misunderstanding the napalm-istic impact of video games (unlike Barry Levinson, who Understands War and the horror of its trivialization). Some might mistake its blunt premise as the confused, semi-senile satire of a man updating a decade-old script with piecemeal details, but in fact the film is an urgent wake-up call, a post-Persian Gulf earnest, decrying…
It’s beyond frustrating that a film that looks this visually unique and imaginative can be such an arduous bore to watch. The film is 2 hours long and yet there’s only enough plot to last roughly half of this time. The rest is padded with meandering dialogue and distractions that completely deter from the story. In any other film I’d possibly appreciate the films dedication to spending time with its characters in smaller moments, but this is not a film that holds either the time or place for such lengthy insight. With the exception of the wide-eyed and child-like Joan Cusack, the cast are either wasted in their positions or speak way too often, be it through horribly undecided accents (Gambon) or just general irritation (Williams). I just don’t feel like there’s much of anything here for anyone to fully enjoy, and its themes are touched on more interestingly in plenty more, much better films.
Bizarre fucking film, a passion project for director Barry Levinson, that oozes with creativity and imagination. It's a shambolic mess at times, too long, too indulgent, but it is carried by it's enthusiasm, it's design work and it's game cast,including Robin Williams, Michael Gambon, Joan Cusack and a very funny LL Cool J. It has some good values at it's core as well, in it's championing of traditionalism and innocence over consumerism and war toys.
Now a word on Robin Williams. never before have I seen such a unanimous outpouring of grief over the death of someone as we have seen the last few days since the tragic news broke. None of use knew him, but we feel like we…
I've long suspected that admitting that I loved the movie Toys as a kid and still like it as an adult might destroy the credibility of my opinion on any other movie or movie-related topic. I've waited, over the years, for a revisionist cult following to form around it, but it appears that people hated it in 1992 and have hated it ever since. As an adult, I can see how elements of it could be grating - if ever a movie belonged on the spectrum, this is it (that I find most of it's Asperger's-y deadpan jokes and non sequiturs hilarious says I don't know what about me). And I had to begrudgingly knock it down about half a…
One of the movies where I figured, "Oh, what the hell?" and watched along with the How Did This Get Made? crew.
Oh boy.
To quote Jason Mantzoukas, this movie is "mind-boggling." It plays out more like a drug-induced fever dream of director Barry Levinson than a coherent film. And the fact that it was, in fact, a dream project of Levinson's is all the more WTF-worthy. This movie is made up of so much random weirdness that all you can do is simply stare at the screen in confused awe. Sure, it all LOOKS good, but it doesn't make one lick of sense. All the characters behave like children, but the plot itself deals with some pretty adult stuff…
When people accuse this of being overlong and boring... they're thinking of the climax. The rest of it is non-stop delight. The performances, especially L.L. Cool J's, are absolutely hysterical and charming. It's worse than I remembered, but I adore it nonetheless.
61 Toys. It's bad, but its like The Shining of bad movies. It swings for the fences and just whiffs. #366Movies #366Days #DLMChallenge
This movie is so completely insane and confused. It has no idea what genre it is or what age range it should be for. The score and soundtrack never match what's happening on screen. I still find it completely comforting to watch.
A toy company owner dies and he decides to leave his company to a war monger general. The general kills the playful spirit of the company and expresses desire to create war toys. Toys had some interesting concepts and oddness to it, but was overall was very difficult to watch. The film drags on and soon I did not care what happened to the company or any of the characters.
I am a massive fan of Robin Williams works - & most notably pre- early 2000s from Mork and Mindy to Good Morning Vietnam, Hook, Jumanji, Flubber to lesser known efforts in The Survivors and Fathers' Day and though a lot of people have made out the fact that not every film he has starred and appeared in have been masterpieces, there is one film in particular where I am somewhat unanimous and in full agreement with most people - and that film is..... Toys.
When the military general decides to make weapons instead of toys, Leslie Zevo, the son of the late eccentric toy maker Kenneth, takes it upon himself to put a stop to this, once and for all.…
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