So it’s the fall of 1992 and I’m at the cinema checking out either The Mighty Ducks or The Bad Lieutenant...I can’t really remember which. I take my seat, the lights dim, and they start rolling out the coming attractions. At some point, the Twentieth Century Fox logo flashes across the screen. Robin Williams materializes. He’s standing in a field and he’s sporting the worst blonde dye job since Californication-era Anthony Kiedis. He stares into the camera and asks the audience if they hated the last preview as much as he did. First--how does Robin Williams know what previews are showing at the Webster Square Cinema in downtown Worcester, MA?? Second--why you gotta harsh on Lorenzo’s Oil, bro? I thought it looked pretty tight! He says that he’s come to discuss his new flick called Toys. He then proceeds to spend the next minute and a half Robin Williams-ing his ass off; he says the name of the film repeatedly; he lapses into actual gibberish for about ten seconds, which is either a vaguely racist attempt at a non-specific Middle Eastern accent or the effects of 16 gin and tonics taking hold; he screams “the Toymintator!” and starts to Schhwarzenegger; he says “hey...Toyz-n-the-Hood!” and starts to motherfucking BEATBOX! He ponders when the appropriate time to release a film called Toys might be: “Should we put it out at Rosh Hashanah? No way! CHRISTMAS!” He mentions that Toys was directed by Barry Levinson of Rain Man fame and launches into a horribly ill-advised impersonation of Dustin Hoffman’s character from that film. The closing text announces that Toys will indeed be released, not at Rosh Hashanah, but at Christmas. You hear that, JEWS!? This flick ain’t for y’all! I’m not sure what disturbed me more that day: the sight of Harvey Keitel swinging his pecker around while smoking crack or the Toys trailer. Possibly the latter. Like...what in the name of Sampson was this movie even about!? A few weeks later, Toys promotional posters started showing up in theater lobbies. They featured the following: an image of red bowler hat-wearing Robin Williams set against a brilliant blue backdrop in an homage to Rene Magritte’s painting The Son of Man...and the word “Toys.” And that’s it! It felt like there was some serious obfuscation being perpetrated by Fox’s marketing department. A sort of disinformation campaign to prevent the public from learning what Toys was actually about. Like if they just put the words “Toys,” “Robin Williams,” and “Christmas” on a poster people would stop with the nosy fucking questions and just fork over their cash already. I know that’s what I did! I was 14 years-old and pretty hot to trot for The Crying Game...but I wasn’t above doing some little kid shit every now and then. I think we left halfway through Toys to sneak into Captain Ron...which we had already seen TWICE.
Here’s what I think went down: in the 1980’s, Barry Levinson had himself a decade. Everything that dude touched turned to at least silver. We’re talking Diner, The Natural, Tin Men, and Good Morning Vietnam just to name most of them. It was 1988’s Rain Man, though, that brought home a mountain of Oscar gold. Full sweep! Who wants to watch Judge Wapner?? Everyone, that’s who. By the time he kicked off the 90’s with Warren Beatty’s Bugsy, another smash ass hit, dude was bona fide! He was fully entrenched on the A-list...mentioned in the same breath as the Scrosesse’s of the film world. Levinson had carte blanche at this point so what better time to dust off his long-gestating passion project and completely torpedo his career!? He walked into Twentieth Century Fox and said “Robin Williams...Toys” and they turned on the confetti cannons and cut him a check for $50 million clams on the spot. That was a ton of cheddar back in ‘92! Kevin Smith could’ve made Clerks 1700 times with that dough! I can really only speculate how Toys became one of the most wrongheaded cinematic disasters of the 90’s...but there HAD to be massive studio interference. It’s as if they took a script that deals primarily with war, PTSD, mental illness, and absent mothers and said “if we can somehow shoehorn Christmas into this story we’ll have us a hit!”
What happens is this: Although the film does not take place at Xmas, or at any actual time or actual place, we open with a Nutcracker-y Christmas pageant at the fully self-contained Zevo Toy Factory. Everyone in the film works and lives in what is clearly a backlot movie set. Levinson seems really proud of this fact...and hey...it worked out so well for Franny Coppola on One From the Heart. Hundreds of children watch enraptured as ballet dancers do ballet things. At the halfway point, though, the music takes a HARD left turn into some bullshitty original Xmas song that sounds like Enya covering Yes’s “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” Sample lyrics: “Christmas comes at the closing of the year!” I ran a fact check on this...and it’s totally true! It’s garish as hell, but hey, the lady soloist is Wendy Melvoin from Prince and the Revolution! (Wendy...Yes Lisa?...Is the water warm enough?...Yes Lisa). Here I should mention that the reason the music sounds so gaudy is that it was, in fact, produced by 80’s cheese whiz master Trevor Horn, who wrote and produce the Yes tune “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” giving them their only #1 hit with a song that sounds absolutely nothing like Yes. Once this opening pageant finally ends, some 45 minutes later, the filmmakers start begrudgingly introducing things like a plot, characters, etc. Turns out the president of Zevo toys is about to croak. His consigliere Owen assumes that he will bequeath the company to his son Leslie (Williams) and daughter Alsatia (Joan Cusack) but pop Zevo has a less sensical plan in mind. Instead, he summons his highly decorated Lieutenant General brother Leland to the factory. Leland is played by the actor who I thought was the same guy who played the coach in Major League (Come on, Dorn--don't give me this Ole bullshit!) but that’s James Gammon and this guy here is Michael Gambon. No relation to the Pulitzer-winning author Michael Chabon...for extremely obvious reasons. Leland has even less interest in running a toy factory than I do in watching this movie. But the old man says that Leslie is a flake and Alsatia is “Well....you know!” No dude...I have absolutely no idea! What I do know is that every time someone says Alsatia’s name I start to think about this pizza I ate this one time that was covered in bacon, onions, and gruyere cheese. That shit was delicious! The old man drops dead immediately. At his funeral, which is sparsely attended, even though he’s the president of a factory whose workers all live onsite, his casket starts laughing. A friggin’ trickster till the bitter end, that old man Zevo.
The next day, the General finally gets a tour of the toy factory. I gotta say—they threw up some pretty impressive sets with all of that Fox coin. If Terry Gilliam had directed this movie it would probably look....exactly like it already does. Less impressive is the song that soundtracks this scene. It’s called The Happy Worker and it sounds like Tori Amos covering the Cops theme song (I’m not joking....it’s really Tori Amos). I can’t really imagine anything worse unless there’s somehow a remix of this same song later in the movie and.....what’s that?? There’s a remix of this song later in the movie?? Well I’ll be dipped in shit! The workers all engage in a synchronized dance routine from a Color Me Badd video while they hammer the toys together. The General looks down his nose at all of this revelry and scoffs “people get paid for this!?” Someone tries to show him some new products but he says he isn’t into “sissy stuff.” But his wheels...they’re a turnin’. He heads straight for the factory hospital (which is just....a tent?) where he chats with an elderly bedridden man played by the great Jack Warden, looking even more miserable than he did in the Problem Child franchise. I thought maybe he was actually dying but it turns out he still had 14 more years of life to live. I have no idea who Jack Warden is supposed to be. They either forgot to tell us or told us and I wasn’t paying attention when they did. Both are extremely possible. The General tells Warden that he wants the factory to start making military toys. Says he feels like he needs to finish what he started in Vietnam...which ended some 17 years before the events in this film. The General goes to visit the Zevo kids (exact ages: Robin Williams—41. Joan Cusack—30) to tell them of his dark vision for Zevo. Leslie doesn’t seem to care either way. Alsatia eats a sandwich full of pills. So she’s a drug addict then? The General decides to bring in his son to help beef up security. His son is played by....wait for it....LL Cool J!! His father is English. And his mother? Isn’t! Ladies Love Cool James turns Zevo into Gattaca overnight. All of a sudden you need to get a friggin retina scan just to use the xerox machine. LL prowls the premises in his red beret, shaking people down and demanding that he be served orderly plates of food (peas and carrots must not touch!). One day, he starts harassing a young lady in the “duplication room” for having improper credentials...and holy smokes...it’s President Claire Underwood! Or...I think she became president? I stopped watching House of Cards after the...what have you. Right...so it’s Robin Wright, with the fakest sounding southern accent ever attempted by an actual Texas native. Robin Williams comes to her rescue...which is problematic as they are both named Robin! I wonder how many times they joked about having the same initials during filming. I’m gonna say at least three times. To avoid confusion I’m gonna refer to her by her character’s name...which is Gwen. Leslie is immediately sweet on her. He follows her home one afternoon and says he needs to get laid. Mmm hmm.
The General takes a trip to an arcade where he sees kids playing a shit ton of Afterburner and Choplifter and comes down with a severe case of the bad ideas. He will design a fleet of lethal toy aircraft that can be deployed into actual war zones. Instead of using trained soldiers, these tiny killing machines will be operated by unsuspecting children via remote control. Why should the military spend millions on a single jet fighter when they can get just as much massacre for next to nothing?? So...ok...some fairly heavy business right there. This concept would probably make for a decent movie...but that movie is not Toys. Why someone would take a story about the role of emerging technologies in modern warfare and try to package it as a Christmas movie is beyond my level of comprehension. They wanted people to watch it, obviously, but there is a 0% chance that anyone would want to watch Toys at Christmas....or ever, really. There are so many conflicting tones at work here and they’re all supposed to just uncomfortably coexist. They really needed to pick a lane but chose to ride in every open lane simultaneously. A lot of the blame, it should be noted, lies on Robin Williams’ shoulders. I mean....I get it—the guy was never NOT hot. He and Levinson were boys going back to Good Morning Vietnam, which fully established Williams as a dramatic actor. But he looks bored as balls here. He pretty much sleepwalks through the role, doing his Robin Williams shtick until he’s red in the face. There’s the usual flashes of brilliance (the scene where he and his co-workers debate the ethnic content of fake vomit is hilarious and belongs in a better movie)...but they are fleeting.
So what the hell else happens then? I wrote “sings In the Still of the Night on the crapper” in my notes. I’m fairly certain that this happens but I have no memory of it and no idea why I felt the need to jot it down. Leslie takes Gwen on a champagne-fueled horse drawn carriage ride through a miniature replica of Manhattan that must’ve cost more than Manhattan (the movie). General Leland keeps taking over more of the factory, shrouding his activities in secrecy and denying access to anyone from the Zevo family. Leslie and Alsatia decide to sneak into the forbidden areas to see what’s the what. How do they go about this? He and his sister trick the guards by making a music video ON THE SPOT and transmitting it to their security screens. They disguise themselves as a duo called Yolanda and Steve and play a song called The Mirror Song that was written by Thomas Dolby but sounds EXACTLY like Talking Heads. And you know? It’s incredible! Robin Williams’ David Byrne impersonation was spot fucking on! It’s not at all worth watching this movie just for that one scene but it’s absolutely worth searching for a clip of it on YouTube. When they finally penetrate the inner sanctum they find a massive war room full of children seated at gaming terminals (note: did they just steal these children?? Do they not have families??). Leslie sees this and mutters “uh oh...it’s FAO Schwarzkopf.” That was a hot reference back in the years after Persian Gulf #1. Leslie approaches one of the little boys and warily asks him what he’s doing. “Blowing up stuff....like PEOPLE!” Leslie asks how many points you get for killing a person. Answer: thousands! Leslie is horrified...but...I don’t know. I legit haven’t owned a home gaming system since the Sega Genesis...but aren’t most video games based around murdering people these days? Leslie's escape is impeded when he falls into a moat and is attacked by the fearsome Sea Swine, a creature the filmmakers were so proud of they decided that the audience shouldn't be able to get a good look at it. I know you don’t see much of the shark in Jaws....but you DO see it at some point! Maybe they ran out of Sea Swine money?
Leslie finally makes it to Gwen’s apartment, where he tells her how upset he is about the war children. And you know what Jethro Tull album sucks? War Child. Leslie asks if he can spend the night. Gwen says yes and immediately removes her bra and prepares for intercourse. What they don’t know is that they are being surveilled by a camera that’s hidden away in a robot toy (why this grown woman has toys in her apartment we do not know). Fortunately her discarded bra landed on the robot toy, blacking out the video. Unfortunately their sex noises can still be heard by a security guard played by future Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx, making his big screen debut! He hears their fuck noises and starts to get all hard and tries to harmonize with their moaning and HOW DO YOU LIKE TOYS SO FAR, KIDS!??? Aren’t you glad you didn’t go see Home Alone 2 instead??
General Leland summons the top military brass to the factory to unveil his new child warfare scenario. Dude is so jacked that he’ll finally be able to finish what he stated in ‘Nam. “The kids are gonna do the wars! The future is anarchy!” They other generals look at Leland like this motherfucker better switch to Sanka pronto! They say thanks but no thanks. They’re all like “we’ll just grab a couple of slinky’s from the gift shop and be on our way” but Leland snaps like a breadstick. He actually starts choking out one of the other generals! So now what’s a deranged warmonger to do with a factory full of unusable war toys and bloodthirsty children? Well....get shitfaced on whiskey and listen to opera for starters. He pulls out a pistol and screams “I’ll show Washington'' but then shoots himself in the foot. Literally. While this Tony Montana-esque bottom out is going down, LL receives a visit from his girlfriend Debi Mazar. I was gonna make a joke about how she was married to some right wing troll who claimed to have invented the internet but that was totally Fran Drescher. Debi Mazar used to date....erm....Pee Wee Herman....and you know that guy smashes! Debi Mazar sits on LL’s lap and he asks her if she ever had sex with his father. She says that she has, yes, but that it was an accident. Now a furious LL decides to help the Zevo kids wrest control of the factory back from his out of control double-dipping dictator father. I was wondering why they would introduce a new character 3/4th of the way through the movie! Debi Mazar’s only function here is to show up and get LL to turn on his father. That’s some C-minus screenwriting right there. (note: I had really hoped to work a “Mamma Said Knock You Out” reference into this review but was completely unable to. Sorry doodz).
Since there’s no room at the Inn for his kill toys, Leland decides that he will bring them online and absolutely positively kill every motherfucker in the factory. Leslie, Gwen, and the rest of the underutilized cast members wrangle all of the non-bloodletting toys together as a first line of defence against the murder bots. I don’t know, y’all--weapons tend to win out over non-weapons pretty much every time. Leslie gives the toys a big, dumb, Robin Williams-y pep talk before they head into battle: “Once more into the breach, dear toys….Ask not what Zevo toys can do for you!” Snorrrreeee. So they go to war and it’s violent as shit, as wars tend to be. The nice guy toys get absolutely annihilated by the General’s monster toys: A toy bear gets its head blown off...A duck wails in agony. Eventually, Leslie and Leland board toy bombers and battle it out high above the fake NYC skyline...but the entire sequence is filmed with this jarring strobe effect that was used everywhere in 1992 and then never again (see my review of The Cutting Edge for more info on this effect). Leland tries to strangle Leslie (strangulation--totally his signature move) but they both go crashing into fake Central Park. Leslie gets the upper hand on Leland, who says the whole thing was a joke. Just one big goof! Leslie says “You tried to kill my entire family! That’s not funny!” And you know...he’s right. It isn’t funny. Before Leland can turn off his war machines one of them blows Alsatia’s head off and HOLY SHIT!!! She’s a ROBOT! Everyone else in the cast is like “holy shit! She’s a robot!” Leslie is like “oh yeah...my dad built her for me so I’d have a pal!” So that’s what was wrong with her?? I thought maybe she was autistic and no one wanted to say it out loud. She’s missing a head but Leslie says they can put her back together with a swiss army knife so all’s well that ends well. While Robin Williams is busy talking to Joan Cusack’s served head, the elusive Swine Monster appears in silhouette and blows LELAND’S head off. Man, the amount of decapitation in this film is truly staggering. It’s all good though ‘cuz in the next scene Leland is re-headed and chilling in the hospital tent. He apparently has to live out the remainder of his days in a cot next to Jack Warden. There are worse fates, I suppose. “Hey Jack--I know you did two movies with Warren Beatty: Is he really as controlling as everyone says he is?”
Before we can go the hell home the movie serves up another superfluous Christmas bookend. Maybe if Xmas is the last thing people see they’ll walk out of the theater thinking they’ve just watched a Christmas movie? It’s basically a reprise of the scene that opened the movie...which also had nothing to do with anything. Leslie and his official GF Gwen and the rest of the crew go to old man Zevo’s laughing grave to tell him that they saved the toy factory and are back to making etch-a-sketches. He can’t hear them, of course--being dead and all. Everyone lives happily ever after. I mean...except for the people who took their kids to see Toys in 1992. Those kids are still all fucked up about it. Maybe some of them have gone on to have children of their own, whom they routinely threaten with Toys. “Don’t forget--If you’re naughty this year you’ll get Toys for Christmas...WITH ROBIN WILLIAMS!!! And god bless us everyone...