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.
Review of Babes in Toyland
