Babes in Toyland (1986)

I caught this movie on TV when I was a teen during the Christmas season, and remembered being quite entertained with all the whimsical scenes and enchanted cast of characters. Drew Barrymore stars as 11-year-old Lisa Piper, who is too busy taking care of her siblings and mother. As a source of escape, she travels to Toyland in Wizard of Oz-like fashion during a Christmas blizzard and arrives just in time for a wedding. A young Keanu Reeves and Clue/Private Benjamin actress Eileen Brennan also stars. Nice visual effects and simple plot. Not the most exciting movie, though, but still an innocent, family-friendly film that is nice to watch over the holidays.Grade B-

Another version of Babes in Toyland. This one is pure kiddie stuff with Drew Barrymore starring as a little girl from Cincinnati (believe me this is important) who accidentally falls into Toyland where she meets all the Mother Goose characters, who happen to look exactly like her friends and family back home. So, yeah, they rip off Wizard of Oz hard here. It's pretty fluffy with some truly terrible songs and a bizarre fascination with the city of Cincinnati. I thought maybe the movie was filmed there and they added all that stuff for a tax break or something but apparently no, it was filmed in Germany. The colorful costumes, props, and sets are all refreshingly old-school. In today's CGI era, it's nice to look back and admire the amount of work and craftsmanship that went into bringing imagination to life back before Skynet took over. The songs are the pits, especially the one about (you guessed it) Cincinnati. The acting is pretty weak across the board. Vets Richard Mulligan, Eileen Brennan, and Pat Morita 'play to the kids,' which is expected I suppose. Keanu Reeves is taking the whole thing so seriously it's embarrassing. Drew Barrymore is clearly having fun but her dramatic scenes are cringeworthy. Like I said, it's aimed at little kids. There's little of interest for adults beyond some nostalgia or maybe to chuckle at all the Cincinnati business. The version I saw was 94 minutes and it was a bit of a chore to get through at that runtime. The original TV airing was much longer. I can't imagine that extra time making this anything but worse.

This version of Babes in Toyland is not quite as bad as it has been cited to be, but it is not really a good film(personal opinion of course, admittedly I did actually like it somewhat as a child) and it is easy to see why it was panned. Babes in Toyland is not without its moments. March of the Toys is actually a good song and deserved a better film or a better version of Babes in Toyland, the song is also nicely staged if not as memorably and inventively as in the Disney film(a decent film if one of the lesser Disney live-action musicals). The incidental score is appropriately whimsical too. Richard Mulligan is a lot of fun as the villain Barnaby, he has great comic timing(but it has been put to better use elsewhere) and he is a convincing threat too. Pat Morita is warm and kindly as the toymaker, Gooey Gress is adorable and the one-eyed bird is well done and frightening. The songs on the whole are not great with some very gooey lyrics, most of them are forgettable and the Cincinnatti song is like nails on a blackboard. Most of the production values look as though they've been done on the cheap too, that's even for a television film, the sets on the most part are garish and of theme park or re-used quality. The costumes are outrageous and like stuffed animals, with Barnaby's black feathery costume making him look like a giant crow. The special effects were clever in the Disney film, here they were sub-par especially the race cars. The acting apart from Mulligan and Morita doesn't work. Eileen Brennan does a decent job with what she has, the problem is that she doesn't have much to do, so no matter how much she puts into it it wasn't worth the bother if the film wasn't going to use her talents well. Drew Barrymore, a promising child actress and has done a lot of great stuff(Grey Gardens and Ever After: A Cinderella Story), has some moments of cute charm but others where she was too syrupy, so it was more an uneven performance than a bad one. Keanu Reeves in an early role is handsome but very wooden with line delivery that is suggestive of him reading from a cue card. The script is uninspired, and the story- admittedly one of the weaker points of the Disney film and the operetta- has very little charm or wonder, partly because of the mix of real life and Toyland(and the whole only a dream premise), themes that seem rather mean-spirited for a fantasy/holiday film and also the unimaginatively staged musical numbers. It also comes across as far too stagy in a theatrical way, is at times ploddingly paced and can be overly cutesy and corny. Clive Donner's direction throughout is unimaginative and bland, it's sad to see a director who did such a great job with one of the best versions of A Christmas Carol two years previously directs with seemingly little interest or enthusiasm. Babes in Toyland has its moments(one really good song and two good performances especially) and has some curiosity value for Barrymore and Reeves early in their careers but overall it doesn't have a whole lot going for it. Stick with the Laurel/Hardy and Disney films instead. 4/10 Bethany Cox

I thought this movie was very cute, everyone sounds like it was a death sentence trying to sit through it. True the music was corny, the storyline weak and the actors needed to go back to acting school but it was a nice 2 hour movie. A good way to take your mind off your troubles. If only life were like this fantasy movie and problems could be solved as easy as a smile and a hug, this is wholesome, innocent goodness you don't see in movies anymore. The cliché of good vs. evil, the over-dramatic heroine, the friendship of strangers whom you met for the first time but feel like you have known them for a lifetime.I got Babes in Toyland when it came out on VHS and I was very disappointed with the release, the movie was shortened to a mere 94 minutes and key plot developments and musical numbers were lost, hopefully the filmmakers will release it on DVD in a fully restored uncut edition complete with a behind the scenes look at the making of the movie and exclusive cast interviews.Every actor in the movie industry needs a starting point, a movie that even they can look at and say, "Oh my God I was in that!" Also, it was a made-for-TV movie so what can you expect "Gone With The Wind?" I don't think so. I guess you can say that NBC did the best they could, after all for a network that in the future would bring us "Friends" and "Deal or No Deal" it was a small and humble beginning.