BABES IN TOYLAND (1986)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Drew Barrymore is Lisa Piper, a Cincinnati 11-year-old girl who cares for her family and apparently does all the cooking. Her older sibling, Mary (Jill Schoelen), works at a toy store and is forced to push sales of teddy bears by a demanding boss (the wonderful Richard Mulligan). Keanu Reeves plays Mary's boyfriend who also works at the toy store. When Lisa gets wind that her mother (Eileen Brennan) will not be in time for dinner due to a severe snowstorm while the TV antenna's signal is cut, little Lisa runs to the toy store and asks for her sister's help. They all drive merrily home while singing "C-I-N-C-I-N-N-A-T-I" until there is a car wreck! Guess what happens! Lisa is transported to Toyland where her sister Mary, now Mary Contrary, is getting married to the dastardly, wicked Barnaby (Mulligan, again) who lives in a giant bowling ball! The marriage is intervened and we also get a roster of talented stars such as Eileen Brennan (again) as Mother Goose; Pat Morita as a Toymaker who turns out to be (SPOILER ALERT!) Kris Kringle himself, and a host of pale-green-faced creatures and actors wearing immobile animal costumes including teddy bears who serve as crossing guards! I think I also spotted Humpty-Dumpty with a movable, wandering eye. "Wizard of Oz," it is decidedly not (The stage musical of "Oz" served as the inspiration for the operetta of "Babes in Toyland" back in 1903).
The Cincinnati opener is actually decent and sort of fun, while it lasts. Jill Schoelen and Drew Barrymore work so well together that you wish they had more screen time as sisters before embarking on the Toyland adventure. Once we enter the colorful Toyland, it disappointingly looks like an amusement park, not a lived-in fantasy land. Worse yet, despite a game cast, the movie is insufferably dull and practically unwatchable. There is no flair or sense of magic in this land - it is dreary and artificial at best despite the brightly colored art-direction. Mother Goose's Shoe House and those Go-Carts are fun for a while (I like Brennan's line: "I will not allow such radical thinking in my shoe!"), and it is somewhat interesting that it is always daylight in Toyland but the whole setting resembles a western that just happens to have odd creatures. Other than that, the movie sinks fast with unmemorable songs and a climax with the toy soldiers that is so shoddily staged (witness Drew pelting monsters with tomatoes and a wooden soldier shedding a tear) that it is hard to believe anyone like director Donner would've shaped it. Everything about this movie is wooden, both in design and staging and performance (Pat Morita and Eileen Brennan bring some measure of intermittent sweetness but lovely Drew is misdirected as if she was a rotten actor who couldn't emote beyond a sunny smile). If you are a babysitter and wish to put the kids to sleep, show them this movie.
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