Personally, I really enjoyed this movie.
I’ve been trying to find a copy locally on DVD but had to pick one up at Amazon. At Amazon I found a stunning number of reviews from people who thought it was a stupid movie.
I always looked at Toys as being a fairy tale of sorts with stunning visuals. It’s one of the few movies where I think “Wow, I want to LIVE THERE!”
What was everyone elses take on this movie?
I want to live there too!
I didn’t care for it. But I think the main reason was that I had just seen Michael Gambon in The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover, and he was such an a-hole extrordinaire in that movie that every time he appeared on the screen in Toys, I just felt such intense dislike for him (beyond the fact that he was the “bad guy”) that it made the movie unpleasant to watch.
I thought it was visually stunning, but that the movie sort of wandered off course about halfway through. I suppose the fact that it becomes progressively darker as it goes is a metaphor for the main character’s growing up, but it didn’t quite work. By the time we got to the “music video”, the momentum had gone, IMO.
OTOH, LL Cool J was fab! I want to disguise myself as a sofa!
It’s a Christmas tradition for me. I try and watch it every year.
Yeah, it gets kinda dumb toward the end, and the battle of the toys really, really doesn’t work for a climax, but there are just too many great moments in the film to let that bug me.
I also make it a point to watch Toys every Christmas. The movie has some thematic flaws, but it has so many strong points, the Rene Magriitte music video, the eve of battle speech by Robin Williams, and Joan Cusack’s performance.
That battle scene is the ONE thing that really bothers me about the film. I didn’t like how it was shot. I thought it took from how the rest of the film flowed.
Right before that shot was great though. Where everyone is running from “ball” and “the very bad baby”.
The movie just doesn’t work. Nice ideas, and visual eye candy, but I’m not impressed by bright shiny objects. I want a story, and TOYS doesn’t have one.
Add me in agreement. I usually like movies that are different and off-beat so while I was watching TOYS I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt. However, at some point I realized I could not be that generous. Barry Levinson is at his best doing brisk and sharply-written movies like DINER, TIN MEN, and WAG THE DOG but he has no talent for doing surrealistic fantasies. Those are best left to people like Tim Burton or Terry Gilliam. Also, because the movie came in 1992, a lot of its satiric jabs at the Cold War and the military-industrial complex were out of date.
Among the worst movies I’ve ever paid to see. Surreal eye candy does not a movie make.
“Are you disrespecting my duplication investigation?” LL was awesome in that movie. And I loved how there was not even a single reference to the fact that he is black and his father is white.
Brilliant soundtrack, too.
The plot doesn’t hang together very well overall, but there are isolated bits that are so cool that I find it a very enjoyable movie.
Terrible, the movie overexerts itself trying to be magical and full of whimsy, but it’s a stiff. Totally inert. Some interesting design ideas, but it gets old fast when there’s nothing else to engage you, and then the heavy-handed moralizing–Yeesh! Levinson obviously thought he was making a statement film as well as a fantasy, but it’s a disaster on both levels. If you trace back Williams’ status as the most unbearable actor of the 90s, it all really begins to fall apart with this film.
A Holiday tradition? Blech–I’ll have seconds on the fruitcake/doorstop instead.
In another thread, I said Moment by Moment was the worst movie I’ve ever seen. I’m standing by that, but Toys still has a solid place in the 10 Worst Movies I’ve Ever Seen list. A really really really bad movie.
There is a reference to the black kid/white dad situation. I believe when LL is introduced (LL is great in that movie by the way) the General references LL’s mother being a nurse in some foreign locale.
I like everythign about the movie except for the battle and the love interest. I think it was done as to not imply incestual subtext to the brother and the sister-bot.