Toys (1992)
[Reader disclaimer: there will be spoilers discussed. This piece also contains material of a mature nature].
We all have films we think fondly of, especially those that inspire nostalgia within us. Most of you probably have a soft spot for the Disney renaissance, with The Lion King (1994) at the forefront. Some of you might remember such gems as Matilda (1996) or The Parent Trap (1998) remake.
When I was a kid, I watched a lot of different kinds of films, but they weren't usually tailored for children. There is one kid's film I remember, though: Toys (1992). I happen to own it, so I popped it on to relive my childhood, delve deep into the nostalgia of yet another classic performance by the late Robin Williams. What I ended up discovering was that this film, a film apparently aimed at children, is one of the craziest things I've ever seen.
The premise is as follows: the owner of a toy factory (Donald O'Connor) dies and leaves his company to his military-based brother, Leland (Michael Gambon) because his son, Leslie (Robin Williams) and daughter, Alsatia (Joan Cusack) are not yet mature enough to run the business by themselves. Leland begins to incorporate war toys into the company's schemes in an attempt to relive his glory days, thus endangering the company and everyone in it, and so Leslie tries to thwart his attempts in order to save the future of toys.
Now, the one thing I vividly remembered about this film, confirmed by rewatching it, is that the set design and cinematography of Toys is absolutely awe-inspiring. The filmmakers took inspiration from René Magritte's paintings and created surrealist (and sometimes disturbing) imagery to truly capture a feeling of childlike imagination, paralleled by Leslie and Alsatia's characters. The vibrant palettes, varying sizes of props and the accompaniment of music from the likes of Tori Amos and Enya made for a bizarre viewing experience, something akin to that of Wes Anderson or Melanie Martinez: it felt innocent yet also vaguely threatening.
What I didn't remember was the completely bonkers story line of Leland's essentially fascist regime of recruiting child soldiers to pilot toy planes and relive his glory days as an established militant general, depicting him as an unhinged Vietnam war veteran who slowly starts to lose his grip on reality. Leland's ideology of the military's future is for it to be affordable but also incorporate the concept of "warfare without a conscience", showing that his time fighting has robbed him of a moral compass. Again, this is a kid's film but go off, I guess.
Leland builds toys (some of which resemble something out of Mike Trim's War of the World sketchbook) and programmes behind restricted doors and begins to alienate himself from everybody else. Towards the end of the film, he even attempts to murder his own son.
Then there's Alsatia's character. As a kid, I remember her being an odd addition to the gang but finding her quirks endearing. As an adult, you can see that she is clearly coded to be autistic, which doesn't sit well when you consider that, contextually, Alsatia is actually a robot.
Joan Cusack's performance conveys stereotypical traits of autism, such as abnormal speech behaviours and an intense focus for certain things: her brother never considers this to be odd due to knowing her true nature as something that is non-human, however, her uncle constantly berates her for her behaviour, referring to her as a "loony". In retrospect, these scenes are uncomfortable to watch and make you question why the writers of the film wrote her to be this way, as if to suggest there is a correlation between autistic behaviour and engineered programming (in other words, implying that autistic people are the "Other").
On the subject of writing, I had to research the certification for this film because there were far more adult jokes in this than I'd remembered. According to IMDb, it's a PG-13 (simply PG by the BBFC) due to "language and sensuality"; the words "big cock" and the phrase "war is the domain of a small penis" were included in this film and I don't know what I'd classify that as other than...gross.
There is a scene where Leland unnecessarily rambles on about how he can't achieve an American accent. There is a scene wherein Leslie and Gwen (Robin Wright) start 'doing the do' and some soldiers are listening in on them moaning. There is a scene where Leland almost lets Leslie be murdered by an aquatic war machine "to see if it works".
As the credits rolled on Toys, I was left with a singular thought: who is this movie for? Surely it's wildly inappropriate for children but it's also extraordinarily weird for adults as well. Also the question remains, what is this film? It starts off as some outlandish and eccentric adventure which turns into a social drama and then the third act arrives with a Game of Thrones-esque battle scene of toys (which results in the massacre of all our fluffy, childhood friends). In the end, I can't help but classify Toys as some kind of horror-inspired anti-war film, though I think it's beyond labels at this point.
Would I recommend watching this? For curiosity's sake, sure. I'm glad I revisited Toys but I doubt I'll be sitting down to watch it again: if I'm looking for Williams in the 90s, I'll go for some Bicentennial Man (1999).
Overall rating: 5/10
- K
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