Toy stories can make us burst with joy, but this wannabe post-modern take on the bonkers “Beanie Baby craze” is no Barbie. Wacky costumes and sterling work from a perfect ensemble (Zach Galifianakis, Elizabeth Banks, Sarah Snook and Geraldine Viswanathan) are rendered null and void by a muddled script, diabolical editing and blah camera-work. Though the movie’s heart is sort of in the right place, it has no soul.
We travel backwards and forwards in time (far too often), as we meet three smart women drawn into the orbit of dysfunctional, spiteful, and fitfully charming soft-toy maker, Ty Warner (Galifianakis; the only member of the cast playing a well-rounded character). Two of these women, Robbie (Banks), and Sheila (Succession’s Snook), sleep with Ty. Maya (Viswanathan) is simply one of his employees. What the female trio share is a willingness to boost Ty’s fortunes, because they think he’s a team player.
Maya is particularly important to the story. Sparky and entrepreneurial, she ignores the wishes of her conservative, Indian-American mum and dad (who want her to become a doctor). Instead, in the mid Nineties, she introduces Ty to the World Wide Web, showing him how to get youngsters and parents hooked on his latest line of winsome cuddly toys. Enter, the Beanie Babies. Soon, fans are viewing “Chops the Lamb” and “Patti the Platypus” as lucrative investments to be hunted down, no matter what the cost. Such material has the potential to be darkly comic (a tie-in with McDonalds goes awry, as customers demanding a Happy Meal turn feral). Alas, directors Kristin Gore and Damian Kulash don’t know how to capture or explore that madness. They’d rather focus on the woes of Robbie and Maya (every time Ty finds a new way to screw them over, the pair complain to Tracey Bonner’s salt-of-the-earth PA, Rose). That is until they, along with Sheila, decide they’ve had enough.
What the film-makers offer, essentially, is a riff on the 1980 hit, 9 to 5 (ie horrible boss suffers dramatic fall from grace, as he’s outwitted by strong and wily women). If only.
By the way, it’s not just the denouement of this narrative that’s false. Lina Trivedi, the real-life tech-genius Maya is based on, had parents who actively encouraged her obsession with computer programming. On so many levels, the facts are far more interesting than the clichéd fiction.
By offering a lazy take on power and greed, Gore and Kulash short change their talented female leads and patronise the audience. Jeez, we could have handled the truth. We’re not babies.
