Unbeknowst to me, the property Babes in Toyland was originally based on a 1903 stage performance that yielded two feature films in 1934 and 1961 with a made-for-TV movie which is our entry today. 11-year-old Drew Barrymore is Lisa Piper, who on the way home with her sister and friends in a blizzard, is thrown from the car into a tree rendering her unconscious. The majority of the movie takes place in Toyland, a fictional town from Lisa’s subconscious filled with Mother Goose characters, walking, talking animals, and a sinister man named Barnaby Barnicle who wishes to rid the world of toys.
After interrupting the marriage between Barnaby and Mary Contrary (Jill Schoelen), Lisa meets the citizens of Toyland and is caught in a web of lies and deceit as Barnaby tries to implicate his nephew Jack-be-nimble (Keanu Reeves) in a nefarious cookie heist to take control of the town and the domain of the Toymaster (Pat Morita). With the help of Georgie Porgie (Googy Gress), Lisa, Mary, and Jack set out to uncover Barnaby’s master plan and his deep corruption in the halls of Toyland. Yep, shit just got real.
I didn’t realize this was a made-for-TV movie until after the fact as even though it seemed cheap, there were a lot of name actors involved and some decent effects work on Barnaby’s trolls/minions of evil/whatever. Of course, having name actors means nothing when none of them can act worth a damn. There were some moments with Richard Mulligan that weren’t bad but he swung back and forth between tolerable to outrageous with not much in between. The rest of the actors were painfully bad. It seems silly to pick apart a young girl’s fantastical story, so I will withhold for the most part but there is no reason to have such awful acting even in a kid’s movie. Good thing for Barrymore that as a young actress that she had a few other entries on her resume before this. Even with Reeves, expectations are not too high for him (especially his earlier roles) but he still manages to deliver dialog as only he can like a slow man reading from a cue card ten feet away.
In my minimal research, it seems like all of the Babes in Toyland movies are different in their plot so the movie wasn’t being held to any particular template. It was cute but not particularly in depth and the characters are inept in their attempts to stop Barnaby from rising to power. A large part of the movie consists of the characters being trapped by Barnaby, only to escape and be recaptured minutes later. It gets tired quickly. There are some random songs sprinkled throughout, calling back to the source material I suppose, but they were sparse enough to make it not a musical but a movie where people break into song periodically. If I can commend it for anything though, the kids stayed put throughout the whole movie (almost unheard of in my house) so at least it works better as a family film than most.
After interrupting the marriage between Barnaby and Mary Contrary (Jill Schoelen), Lisa meets the citizens of Toyland and is caught in a web of lies and deceit as Barnaby tries to implicate his nephew Jack-be-nimble (Keanu Reeves) in a nefarious cookie heist to take control of the town and the domain of the Toymaster (Pat Morita). With the help of Georgie Porgie (Googy Gress), Lisa, Mary, and Jack set out to uncover Barnaby’s master plan and his deep corruption in the halls of Toyland. Yep, shit just got real.
I didn’t realize this was a made-for-TV movie until after the fact as even though it seemed cheap, there were a lot of name actors involved and some decent effects work on Barnaby’s trolls/minions of evil/whatever. Of course, having name actors means nothing when none of them can act worth a damn. There were some moments with Richard Mulligan that weren’t bad but he swung back and forth between tolerable to outrageous with not much in between. The rest of the actors were painfully bad. It seems silly to pick apart a young girl’s fantastical story, so I will withhold for the most part but there is no reason to have such awful acting even in a kid’s movie. Good thing for Barrymore that as a young actress that she had a few other entries on her resume before this. Even with Reeves, expectations are not too high for him (especially his earlier roles) but he still manages to deliver dialog as only he can like a slow man reading from a cue card ten feet away.
In my minimal research, it seems like all of the Babes in Toyland movies are different in their plot so the movie wasn’t being held to any particular template. It was cute but not particularly in depth and the characters are inept in their attempts to stop Barnaby from rising to power. A large part of the movie consists of the characters being trapped by Barnaby, only to escape and be recaptured minutes later. It gets tired quickly. There are some random songs sprinkled throughout, calling back to the source material I suppose, but they were sparse enough to make it not a musical but a movie where people break into song periodically. If I can commend it for anything though, the kids stayed put throughout the whole movie (almost unheard of in my house) so at least it works better as a family film than most.
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