Movie · 1992 · Fantasy, Comedy, Science Fiction · 2h 2m · PG-13 · English
Curator score: 0.9/10 (63.1K ratings)
Laughter is a state of mind.
Overview
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.
Ratings
Curator score: 0.9/10
IMDb: 5.1/10
Letterboxd: 2.75/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 26%
Metacritic: 40
TMDB: 5.3/10
Director
Barry Levinson
Production
20th Century Fox, Baltimore Pictures
Cast
Robin Williams, Michael Gambon, Joan Cusack, Robin Wright, LL Cool J, Donald O'Connor, Arthur Malet, Jack Warden, Debi Mazar, Wendy Melvoin, Julio Oscar Mechoso, Jamie Foxx, Shelly Desai, Blake Clark, Art Metrano, Tommy Townsend, Clinton Allmon, Kate Benton, Steve Park, Julie Hayden
Curator Review
Verdict
A wildly designed, aggressively odd studio fantasy that’s more interesting as an artifact than as a smoothly working movie. Its production design, satirical anti-war premise, and anything-goes visual imagination are memorable, but the film is also meandering, overlong, and tonally scattered.
Best for
fans of surreal production design
viewers who like eccentric 90s studio experiments
people interested in anti-war satire wrapped in fantasy
Robin Williams completists
fans of visually baroque, imperfect cult films
Skip if
you want a tight, fast-moving family adventure
you’re allergic to tonal whiplash and shaggy plotting
you need a movie with clean emotional payoff
you prefer polished scripts over visual invention
Overview
Toys is the kind of major-studio oddity that feels like it escaped from a parallel universe. Barry Levinson stages a toy factory as a candy-colored nightmare of militarism, bureaucracy, and childlike whimsy, and the result is often more fascinating than it is entertaining. The sets and art direction do a lot of the heavy lifting, but they’re doing remarkable work: this is a movie that commits fully to being visually unlike anything else from its era.
Worth noting
The problem is that the film keeps mistaking eccentricity for momentum. It drifts, repeats itself, and sometimes seems unsure whether it wants to be a satire, a fairy tale, or a broad Robin Williams vehicle. When it lands on a strong image or a sharp anti-war joke, it can feel inspired; when it doesn’t, it feels like a very expensive improvisation.
Bottom line
Still, for viewers who enjoy ambitious failures, Toys has a real cult-movie charge. It’s messy, overstuffed, and often baffling, but it’s also sincere in its weirdness. The result is less a crowd-pleaser than a conversation piece, and that may be exactly why it has endured.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Scumbalina (4.5★) · 646 likes
"This is obviously the vomit of a white man"
Eliza (5★) · 388 likes
WHAT THE FUCK IS WITH ALL OF YALL THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME AND LB HAS THIS AT A 2.4 WTF YALL DON'T KNOW ART
Keith (2★) · 262 likes
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.
Luke Whitticase (2★) · 182 likes
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… more 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… more
pd187 (3.5★) · 181 likes
how is it this guy did a $50mil $tudio blockbu$ter abt the military programming kids to kill while his son* (who plays one of the VR drone-addicts in this!) makes child softcore on hbo for guys who write 11-like reviews riffing on "west elm caleb"?? some of this has the expressionist tint & splendor of like, mishima (same italo art director as schrader's cat people, and scarface) which just makes the hacky improv & expensive-kitsch goofery even more embarrassing when it feels… more how is it this guy did a $50mil $tudio blockbu$ter abt the military programming kids to kill while his son* (who plays one of the VR drone-addicts in this!) makes child softcore on hbo for guys who write 11-like reviews riffing on "west elm caleb"?? some of this has the expressionist tint & splendor of like, mishima (same italo art director as schrader's cat people, and scarface) which just makes the hacky improv & expensive-kitsch goofery even more embarrassing when it feels… more