Babes in Toyland (1986)

Trailer:

*Spoilers throughout*

What’s It About: I could make a very lazy and lewd off-color joke about how I thought this was supposed to be the porn version of Babes in Toyland because of the easily used double entendre title. On the one hand I think the porn version would’ve been a better movie. 11-year-old Drew Barrymore is the star of this German produced made-for-TV movie. It’s Christmas Eve and her mom is delayed coming home somewhere with her little brother and has Drew hold down the fort. Drew’s older sister has to go to work that night because she works at a toy store. A very shady and sleazy toy store I might add. It looks like a warehouse that would house only contraband and cheap black market knockoffs. Drew is watching the weather reports of an incoming blizzard while she’s making dinner or cookies (it’s not clear) but it’s to show that she is the most responsible 11-year-old EVER!!! Even though she has an older sister.

Anyway there’s a massive blizzard on the way to Cincinnati even though it’s already a harsh snow storm already. But a BIGGER storm is COMING so Drew runs to her sister’s store to persuade her to come home. There we meet Keanu Reeves, some actor named Googy Gress and Richard Mulligan. Mulligan is the sleazy and villainous store manager who actually sexually advances on Drew’s sister while she’s working. Drew leaps to her sister’s aid by calling out how vile Mulligan is acting towards her. Keanu and Googy come to the girls’ rescue to take them home. While in the Keanu’s very unstable Jeep they all sing some song about Cincinnati. Not kidding. In a Christmas movie, a remake from a beloved classic there’s a song not about snow, Christmas, Santa or even candy but a song highlighting the Reds and Bengals. I kid you not. At first I didn’t care about the song because I can forgive a stupid song since I’m under the impression this film is a musical and there’s other songs to watch later but there’s maybe 4 songs total and one of them is a reprise of this dumb Cincinnati tune.

Anyway, while gleefully singing the awful song the Jeep skids and Drew is thrust out of the vehicle but lands safely on the sled her sister was giving her for Christmas and slides down a snowy hill into a tree. Then we enter the magical land of Oz Toyland. This is where the film really gets creepy. About 75% of the denizens of Toyland are people in fantastical animal costumes like frogs, rabbits, mice and teddy bears. They all represent Mother Goose or other famous nursery rhyme characters. The town looks like something a carnival would build or like a replica wild west attraction town. It looks pitifully cheap and tacky. The anthropomorphic characters with giant plastic or furry heads are so disturbing it looks just like the people wearing the animal masks in the original Wicker Man. Drew is fine with all this and bumps into Googy who now is Georgie Porgy and dressed like Tweedle-Dum. It takes him about 2 minutes to get her and us up to speed on what’s going on in Wonderland Toyland.

Everyone in the town is gathering for the wedding uniting Mary Contrary (Drew’s sister) to Barnaby Barnicle (Richard Mulligan). Mary is forced under her will to marry this villain but instead is love with Jack Be-Nimble (Keanu). Drew interrupts the wedding and calls it off when Georgy tells her of this information and Barnaby runs off with his dark minions to his lair, which is a dark dank hole in the ground below a bowling ball. Yes a bowling ball. There he plans his next move to destroy or take over Toyland. He also has an ace in his sleeve which is a dodo-like bird creature with one eye that can see whatever anyone Barnaby wants to see is doing. However, the images are superimposed over the creature’s actual eyeball like a TV screen. So I don’t know if the bird can actually see these images or only someone else watching his eye can. Because that’s a pretty lousy power to possess if you think about it. But I’ve already given this way too much thought.

So now that Nod Toyland has a saviour in Drew the town is so happy now. Seems Barnaby has been trying to stick it to Toyland for a while and it’s only now they have a champion to stop him. Next we are introduced to the Toyland’s cookie factory where Barnaby’s next nefarious act takes place. He and his two Riff-Raff look-a-like minions (Mack and Zack) sneak into the warehouse and through a convenient trap door that has a tunnel that leads to Barnaby’s lair they throw in every single box of cookies in the room. This plan includes blaming Jack for the theft of the cookies and he is arrested. Through sheer cunning, Drew distracts the judge of Toyland so Georgy can snatch the only set of keys hanging from the Judge’s key ring that will unlock Jack’s jail cell.

The gang then seek help from the Toymaster played with aplomb by the immortal Pat Morita. They explain to him the whole story and about Barnaby’s evil plot(s). The Toymaker then reveals a secret. That he’s been collecting all the evil in the world. Why a Toymaker would want to “collect” pure evil is a question for the ages. He then gets a decanter from his cupboard and tells them that there’s enough room left in that bottle for Barnaby’s evil. All the while Barnaby is watching them talk from his bird’s eyeball. Now that he knows about a bottle half full of concentrated evil he wants his villainous hands on it for more villainous power! Suddenly they figure out that there must be someway that Barnaby took those cookies from within the cookie factory and Jack and Georgy investigate. Just as Jack finds the trap door, Mack and Zack spring the trap on him and Jack falls to a cage in the lair. As if that wasn’t enough he is then tortured to a terrible song sung by Barnaby highlighting how evil he is.

When the rest of the gang figure out Jack is missing they try to find him. Mary sneaks into the bowling ball and she too is captured by Barnaby and imprisoned with Jack in the underground lair. Drew and Georgy again seek help from the Toymaster who pretty much acts like he cannot be bothered with them. He tries to explain that even evil people like Barnaby have some good in them, and as soon as he says that Barnaby bolts in with his minions and ties them all up. He then steals the bottle of evil and leaves them with the seeing-eye bird creature. Drew easily unties herself and they fight off the creature and paint his eyeball so he and Barnaby cannot spy anymore and they trap him in a crate.

Now, Georgy and Drew leave the town to venture out into the forbidden forest for reasons I don’t remember nor care and they too fall into Barnaby’s trap and are imprisoned in the same cell with Jack and Mary. Barnaby then releases the evil from the bottle which is essentially just a green mist on them to try to make them into his evil minions. However, Drew is immune to it and starts to sing the Cincinnati song again to get the others to also fight off the vile green mist evil thing. It takes some doing but eventually good triumphs over the evil. But they pretend to be evil by hissing and groaning a lot and hunching over to fool Barnaby that they are evil and so he can let them out of the cage. They escape but at the same time Barnaby releases his most heinous plot yet, dozens of human-sized automaton twig/branch mud creatures to slowly pursue the heroes and eventually to attack Narnia Toyland.

What happens next is probably the dumbest scene ever, even for a kids’ film. The heroes stop the twig creatures (for now) but are chased now by Barnaby and Zack and Mack on go-carts around the town. Actually not so much around the town but around one big building. The carts go maybe 20 MPH and they are being chased around one large building over and over again, literally in circles. It’s really embarrassing to see actors like Barrymore, Reeves and even Mulligan do such a stupid scene. 20 MPH is bad enough, I can outrun 20 MPH if I had to, and around one big building is insulting to the audience, even if the audience are 5-year-olds.

Barnaby and the minions unlock the gate that is containing the twig creatures to unleash into the town. The heroes again seek help from the Toymaster because he’s been such a great help every time they talk to him. He then tells Drew that she must now believe in toys to defeat Barnaby and the creatures. Yeah, if only she was really a kid and not such a responsible 11-year-old and played more with toys that she would have the power to defeat Barnaby’s evil. 11 isn’t that young in respects of playing with toys. That’s the age most kids put away such frivolous things and start to get into more adult things like novels, music, hobbies and sports and possibly dating. Not still playing with Barbies. So I’m not sure what the message really is here in this film. To never grow up. If they made her younger I wouldn’t be so nit-picky but I think they picked the wrong age. Anyhoo, I wasn’t thinking all this at the time I was watching the film because I was too stunned by the really horrible musical number by Pat Morita. Well, a terribly over-dubbed Pat Morita but still. Believe me, you do not want to see Mr. Miyagi sing and dance while wearing a cobbler costume with a silly white beard.

The song and dance convince Drew to remember her short years of actually being more kid-like and her magic animates a few dozen wooden soldiers that the Toymaster conveniently had tucked away in a closet. These soldiers do battle with the terrorizing twig creatures and win. Zack and Mack are attacked (nice) by Georgy and knocked out. Barnaby is out-duked by Jack and is then exiled along with all his minions to the neighboring forest.

The finale is simply the REAL wedding of Jack and Mary and Drew being escorted back to her world with Pat Morita dressed as Santa Claus on a flying sleigh with reindeer made out of wood. Drew awakens not in a hospital as anyone knocked unconscious for hours should but on her couch in her house with her mom, sister, Keanu and Googy relieved she’s OK. The film then rips off The Wizard of Oz more-so by having her tell the story of Toyland and her adventures while she was comatose.

Is It Actually Jolly: I will not compare this version of the film to the other older ones like the classic with Laurel and Hardy mainly because I don’t recall too much from those films. Of course I remember the March of the Wooden Soldiers scene so I was glad this version didn’t change that too much. However, this film did not exude too much holiday spirit at all. Besides the first 10 minutes in Cincinnati and the toy store that the sister works in and the Morita as Santa and back in Cincinnati finale nothing is even mentioned about Christmas. Toyland is always bright as day, no snow or holiday decorated but instead more of a Mother Goose vibe. When I think Christmas I also think overcast because it’s wintertime and if you’re not going to have snow don’t make it so sunny it looks like a summer day.

Jolliest Moment: I can’t. I just can’t.

Dumbest Moment: If you read my synopsis I already spoiled the dumbest moment with the go-cart chase scene. It’s beyond idiotic.

Overall: This movie is terrible in so many ways. I never heard of it until I saw it on Instant Netflix. It grabbed my interest mostly on the cast and thought it at least would be fun to mock. Not really. It took a lot for me not to fall asleep during it. It’s creepy, poorly executed, horribly acted and the musical numbers are downright deplorable. I literally seen school plays with more value. Avoid this like the plague folks. It would be more worth your time to watch every hour of TBS 24-hour Christmas Story marathon.

Score: 2 (out of ten)