TOYS
A film review by Laurie Mann
Copyright 1992 Laurie Mann
This is one of the most frustrating movies of recent times. For the third time, Robin Williams has made an overblown movie of style over substance (the other two being POPEYE (which I liked) and HOOK (which I really didn't)). Williams played the quietly manic son of a recently-dead toy manufacturer whose inheritance is passed on to his uncle. Joan Cusack played his sister and Robin Wright played the woman he gets interested in. I don't remember the name of the actors who played the uncle or Cousin Patrick. I think the actor who played Patrick was acting in his first movie, and he played his role so straight that he provided a perfect foil for Williams and Cusack.
The first hour of this movie is full of delight and fun surprises. The writing is a tad weak, but the acting was pretty good considering. In a movie like this, the acting usually dies before the writing does, but that didn't happen here. The art direction and camera angles were inventive. The movie starts to fall apart in the middle and dies during the last half (though the last ten minutes or so return to being quirky).
Barry Levinson and the writer (or did Levinson write this one too?) should be taken out and "re-educated".
I saw this movie in a cinema with eight theaters. When people saw the long faces walk out of this movie at the end, about a third of the people waiting went to see FOREVER YOUNG instead (the line for A FEW GOOD MEN being too long). This movie is being marketed as a comedy, but for nearly twenty excruciating minutes, there's absolutely nothing funny about it.
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