Toy Stories
Movies about toys should be playful. There’s no way around that. The joy of a toy comes from its interaction with the user. As such, movies about toys should appeal to the audience’s imagination, nostalgia, or personal experience. Otherwise, all the movie has is a bit of product placement. Here’s five movies about toys, from most to least playful. Make your conclusions about the correlation between playfulness and watchability accordingly.
The Lego Movie (2014)
Emmett (Chris Pratt) is a construction worker who is perfectly content to live and build according to the instructions set out by President Business (Will Ferrell). Then Emmett literally stumbles upon The Piece of Resistance, is deemed The Special by Vitruvius, a wizard Lego figure (Morgan Freeman), and must tap into his inner nonexistent creativity to defeat President Business and stop him from supergluing his world together.
Remember the sprawling landscapes, eldritch abominations, and slapstick battles you created with Lego bricks? The attributes of a multiverse of bricks are fully exploited in The Lego Movie. There is absolutely no way you could be disappointed by the film: disappointment requires falling short of expectations, and really, what did you expect about a movie about construction blocks? Its festive mania is utterly unpredictable. I won’t spoil this movie further, save to say that Good Cop/Bad Cop (Liam Neeson) features as a major supporting character.
Toy Story (1995)
Woody the cowboy (Tom Hanks) is Andy’s favourite toy, but one day Andy receives Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) the space ranger as a present. Although Buzz is the only member of the toybox who doesn’t realize he is a toy, he rapidly wins the adoration of the other toys- including Mr. Potato Head (Don Rickles), Slinky Dog (Jim Varney), Hamm the Piggy Bank (John Ratzenberger) and Bo Peep (Annie Potts). But after a moving day mishap, Buzz and Woody are stranded in the lair of the sadistic Sid (Erik von Detten) and must work together to return home.
We’re all 90’s kids. Toy Story is universally adored by children and adults alike, and as a technical milestone in animation. I’m expected to write something gushy with lots of poignant adjectives, followed by an anecdote about my childhood, and some stats about how computationally taxing it was to render each 300MB frame. Alternatively, I could write about how overrated Toy Story is: it is true, since Toy Story is extremely well-regarded, but this would invariably look like the bitterness of unresolved childhood issues. Either way, I don’t believe it would sway your decision of whether or not you’d want to watch Toy Story in the near future.
Ted (2012)
One Christmas, young John (Mark Wahlberg) wishes that his teddy bear was real, so that he could have friends. Lo and behold, the holiday magic brings Ted (Seth MacFarlane) to life. The years pass, and John acquires a girlfriend (Mila Kunis), who would really like to get married to him, and whom Ted sees as threat to his relationship with John.
The character of Ted would be unbearable if he was a person instead of a stuffed toy: he is as rude, violent, and debauched as a two-foot lump of cotton stuffing could be. Luckily, his resemblance to our own absent childhood companions maintains some level of sympathy for his role in John’s life, and MacFarlane is very skilled at relentlessly prolonging the foul-mouthed ursine’s welcome.
Transformers: The Movie (2007)
This is a story of boy meets car. The boy, Sam Witwicky of Los Angeles, California (Shia LaBeouf), grew up believing that his grandfather had discovered an alien artifact in the Arctic. This belief was not entirely misplaced. The car, Bumblebee, an Autobot: one of a race of designated “good” robots from space led by Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), who moonlights as a tractor trailer. Since the disintegration of his home planet the Autobots have been hounded by the clearly-evil robot race of Decepticons, as led by Megatron (Hugo Weaving). The Decepticons know almost immediately that Sam’s artifact is what they’ve been searching for. This is a story of boy meets car, but you should know upfront, this is not a love story.
I don’t really hate Transformers. It’s a solid B-movie burdened with an A-movie budget. That means that the robots are rendered in glorious mechanical detail and that Michael Bay’s explosions are realistic and omnipresent. Shia LeBoeuf is not a bad actor, and neither is his love interest, played by Megan Fox. Megan Fox seems fully aware that she was only cast in this movie for her body, but still manages to exhibit a personality in a role that could be fulfilled by a cabbage with lipstick.
Battleship (2012)
Aliens invade during a naval training exercise. A hothead, slacker lieutenant (Taylor Kitsch) leads the defense. This movie also stars Rihanna, Meth Damon, and Liam Neeson. Disappointingly, Liam Neeson’s asskicking is restricted so as not to outshine the hothead slacker lieutenant.
Battleship is a very simple game, and as such, its similarities to the movie are limited: there are five alien ships. There is bombardment of artillery at sea. Battleship is literally a crapshoot. I suggest watching CollegeHumor’s Minesweeper: The Movie (2007) instead. Since it is technically a trailer, it will take only two minutes to watch, yet perfectly encapsulates a Minesweeper’s player’s motivations, uncertainty, and ambitious pursuit of a new high score. In contrast, Battleship is two hours long and is an incredibly generic alien invasion/ war movie. Choose wisely.
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