“Fight fire with marshmallows”
“Toys” is a wonderful movie. I remember the first time I saw the VHS box for this film in a Blockbuster when I was little and thought it was a sequel to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. However, I would not see this film until my freshman year of high school when I was stuck on a couch for a day resting after minor surgery.
The film could be seen as the toy factory version of the chocolate factory owned by Mr. Wonka; however, the toy-maker\owner version of Willy Wonka would have to be Mr. Magorium.
The film starts out with a nice Christmas scene and then with the last minutes of Kenneth Zevo’s life, owner and founder of Zevo toys. Kenneth wanted to give the company to his son and\or daughter but he felt neither was ready for that responsibility and so he hands it over to his brother Leland, who followed in their father’s footsteps in the military and is obsessed with it. Kenneth figured that by doing this it would help to make Leslie, his son, ready to take the company, and it does.
Zevo Toys is all about being whimsical and most of their toys are of old fashioned make. Leland being the crazy obsessed militaristic guy he is starts ruining this company by secretly making war toys that he hopes to employ in actual war using kids to control the toys via video games except the kids will unknowingly be killing actual people. Thus, Leslie needs to stop him.
This movie is really great and does some pretty creative things with the cinematography. The plot is also pretty fun and interesting. On top of this, the movie really has a great cast: Robin Williams, LL Cool-J, Joan Cusack, and Michael Gambon.
Sorry this review is short. It has to do with the fact that it is a comedy I guess. Comedies typically have simpler plots even the complicated ones. In addition, a major part of comedies is the jokes and I cannot really give those away.
“Toys” is a fantastic comedy and certainly not the cheap kind. It is creative, fun, charming, whimsical, ridiculous, silly, entertaining, and actually has socio-political philosophical redeeming value. I personally love this film and give it 4 out of 5 for a movie in general. As far as a Christmas movie, I give it 2.75 out of 5. It did come out around Christmas (Dec. 18th, 1992), both the beginning and end of the film are centered around Christmas, the movie does have its own Christmas song (At the Closing of the Year), and it is all about Toys. Christmas just really is not a theme in this movie, kind of like with Gremlins.
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