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.
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…
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.
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 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, but at the same time, it.... has some watchable scenes with Robin Williams in them - and that film is..... Toys.
When the military general decides to make weapons instead of toys when he tries to take over his brother's factory, Leslie Zevo, the…
After reading a biography and watching a documentary about Robin Williams, I decided to go back and visit some of his older movies that I missed.
I started with Toys.
Toys is a frustrating movie. It has a unique visual style and all of it is wasted with a boring narrative. It’s synonymous to Downsizing. Both movies seemed promising, but instead they tried too hard to be big and bad with a “clever” message.
I don’t know why there are so many bad critics for this movie. I think it was a masterpiece and it reminded me how much we missed Robin Williams. First of all, there is a grand effort for the production design and beautiful colours mash up. Comedy elements are perfectly mixed with weird circumstances. It is a fortunateller movie for pointing out how our lifes are today. And I find myself dreaming how the actual toys should have been like...
Wtf?
I mean I love Robin but like this was just strange.
Sadly just not super appealing to me
Probably my least-favorite Robin Williams’ film. Wiley Wonka meets The Santa Clause II. My theory is that it sucked so hard because whenever they said Robin on set, Wright and Williams both kept responding each time and that wasted precious precious minutes. I loved the style and cinematography. Skip if you have a choice.
Roughly, Toys is the story of a legendary toy maker who, in his dying wishes, inexplicably leaves his fantastical toy empire in the care of a war-mongering sociopath, (Gambon) rather than his middle-aged, boy-child son (Williams). Was it a deliberate ruse to bring the family together, to encourage the son to embrace his fathers legacy ?.......Who cares.
On first appearances Toys looks great, vivid primary colours, huge doll's houses sat in the middle of plush green fields, actual toys, only on a giant scale, the kind you might expect to see in some form of arts instillation. Unfortunately these images are sparse and half-hearted, almost as if the budget ran out after the production team knocked out the first few.…
Tobias Andersen 5,143 films
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