Robert and the Toymaker (2017) User Reviews

Boring and Dull

[claudio_carvalho · 2/10 · 20 November 2017]

"The Toymaker" is a boring and dull B-movie absolutely overrated in IMDb User Rating. The storyline is silly and the screenplay is excessively talkative. There is no tension and the one-dimension characters are awfully developed. The art of the poster is the only thing worthwhile in this flick. There is no credit song in the end; therefore it is not informed the song that the Toymaker is listening to in the radio (Bessie Smith maybe?). My vote is two.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

A supposed horror, but as wooden as the dolls themselves.

[johannes2000-1 · 3/10 · 10 July 2018]

It is hard to believe that this movie dates from 2017, it could as easily have been a product form the sixties or even pre war! It is supposed to be a horror movie and a nowadays horror movie should at least have an adequate pace, some decent scares and convincing CGI. Not so here. The pace of this movie is slower than slow, it is as if all the actors are sleep-walking, while pronouncing their elaborate and endless dialogues as distinct as if they are speakers on some congress to an audience that's fighting to stay awake. The whole sequence of the Nazi officers visiting and searching the house of the poor farmers family lasts over half an hour, not because there is so much to do or show, but just because the head Nazi takes forever and ever in explaining and justify his actions. I suppose the director aimed at some chilling effect, but the contrary is the case: after 10 minutes you just think: My god, DO something, go away, kill them, but DO something!!! When the shots finally fall, it's almost a relief.

And this dreadful boring mode goes on throughout the whole movie. Were the farmer and his wife already the epitome of mono-syllabic bores, the real main character (the Toymaker) is even worse. He drawls his endless lines infinitely, moves as a zombie and by the way wears the worst fake bald-head cap that I've seen for a long time.

To top all this, the dolls - who of course should be the horrifying centers of this movie - are duller and dummer than I've seen in a long time. They are supposed to have come to life by way of an occult spell, but they do not change one bit in their appearance, they hardly move at all, we just see their wooden arms lift a tiny bit and come down again. Wow, it really made me cringe, but not from fear! When they in the end murder the treacherous help and the Nazi officer, they do this so clumsily and slow (you can almost feel how someone outside the camera tries to move their wooden limbs about), that it's a miracle why the assaulted (one of them a well-trained military, one may presume!) don't just crawl away out of reach of these preposterous little arms.

Maybe I missed some deeper meaning, and I do acknowledge the nice atmosphere and photography, but that was about all. It's beyond me who the makers thought to please with this supposed horror movie without even the slightest scare or horror or even a tiny anxiety or thrill. However, I did sleep very well afterwards, so it did serve at least one purpose!

May I search your home?

[nogodnomasters · 2/10 · 20 September 2017]

This is the prequel to the Robert series. Quick synopsis: Doll maker, Nazis, magical book, Harriet Rees gives us a laughable death scene, Amos acted like an Amish man with a bad Ed Wynn wig. You could see the line of the wig. There were actually 3 animated dolls. We know why one was evil, but not the other two. No one can escape a doll armed with a deadly pencil.

Plot questions....Why did the puppet maker have a book with an English title (Dogs)? If the evil book was written by a man who studied the occult in Egypt and Tibet, why was it a Latin phrase (and a short one at that) which brings the puppet to life? What was with the burning of the shop scene? The plot was sloppy, filled with holes, bad acting and poorly conceived film. The puppet motion was comical as was the sound track. Stick a fork in it.

Guide: No swearing, sex, or nudity.

Horrifying that this movie actually exist.

[narsaarf · 1/10 · 8 September 2017]

Only a small spoiler in the middle of the review. I could make a long list on why this movie was without doubt one of the worst movies i have seen in ages but i will keep it short.

I do love B-movies i really do but this was not even good enough to be called a "B movie" i have seen school projects from 15 year old's that where better, I don't mind acting being a bit bad or in some cases a disaster. but if every actor in the movie reminds me of a 3 year old trying to lie to his parent for breaking some rule then it is to far gone.

The entire beginning was basically "i saw inglorious bastards i wanna copy that first scene but change it a little bit".

I literally made a IMDb account to post this review. that is how bad the movie was. Coming from someone that and watches both movies and series every single day not to mention i collect VHS, DVD and Blu rays, i thought i had seen some bad movies.. but then this crossed my path and i realised that i think i just saw one of the worst movies i have ever seen. And the worst part is i actually payed for it. if i had bought the disc (i rented digitally) it would have been the first movie i ever would have destroyed and thrown out.

Since English is not my native tongue i apologize for misspellings and other grammatical errors.

The Toymaker: Vast improvement over the previous two films

[Platypuschow · 5/10 · 21 January 2018]

Robert The Doll (2015) and Curse Of Robert The Doll (2016) were awful films, truly appalling poorly made messes.

For this reason I was stunned they made anymore, and even more stunned when I realised that this one isn't actually bad.

The Toymaker otherwise known as Robert & The Toymaker is a huge improvement. For a start the cast are great, the opening scene especially was extremely good and filled with tension.

Next the movie takes a new direction and isn't another mindless killer doll movie, this origin story is less action and more substance.

There is still plenty of stupidity on display, some ropey sfx, unanswered questions and some clear influence from the Puppet Master franchise but it's a step up from the previous films regardless.

I'd not say this is a good film and I'd recommend it to nobody, what I will say however is the creators are at least heading in the right direction which makes me hope the 4th part will be entertaining.

The Good:

Some decent performances

Great opening

The Bad:

Toymakers makeup effects are terrible

Doesn't actually have much of a story

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

During World War 2 Germans spoke English in their home country

Despite having no joints in a dolls fingers they can still pick things up

Bad

[imhoturnot-31024 · 2/10 · 8 April 2022]

Terrible fake accents and budget ageing makeup. Set in WW2 but modern things still left on the set like a Visa credit card sign in the shop and modern toys 😂

Horribly bad

[newlifetamer · 1/10 · 11 September 2017]

AWFUL , TOTAL WASTE OF TIME this movie is unbelievably bad , the acting is the worst i have seen in my life , story is lame , so much unnecessary scenes , don't waste your time watching this movie , and i am really frustrated of all the positive reviews posted , they are misleading and made me waste my time trying to watch this failure of a movies

One book that never properly comes to life

[TheLittleSongbird · 3/10 · 7 June 2018]

Saw 'The Toymaker', being fond of horror/thriller regardless of budget (even if not my favourite genre) and being intrigued somewhat by the idea. Being behind on my film watching and reviewing, with a long to watch and review list that keeps getting longer, it took me a while to get round to watching and reviewing it.

Giving 'The Toymaker' a fair chance with being interest and apprehension, it turned out to be far better than expected. Won't say that 'The Toymaker' is a great film because it isn't (pretty weak actually) and the potential, while not wasted, is not fully lived up to. Considering the large number of films seen recently being mediocre and less and wasting potential, was expecting worse and was relieved that while wanting in a fair few areas it was actually marginally better than most recent low-budget viewings.

'The Toymaker' started off quite reasonably, the first twenty minutes or so starting the film off on a promising, unsettling and atmospheric note that really does intrigue.

Production values did have some eeriness and nowhere near as cheap as expected, and the music, which not the most memorable in the world, didn't detract from the atmosphere.

The setting is effectively spooky. There are a few spooky and suspenseful moments.

However, the story was severely wanting in especially the second half after starting off promisingly for the first twenty minutes. It is very disjointed, extremely padded with so many scenes that add nothing and gets dull and uneventful too early after the promising start. The final third especially loses atmosphere, one loses interest and things start to not make sense and gets increasingly jumbled. Too much of the film is vague and doesn't explore some elements and story strands enough (motives are underexplored or absent for example), some dropped soon after being introduced, go nowhere or serve much point.

Ending is unsatisfying, on top of feeling hasty there are too many loose ends hanging in the air. Got the sense that the writers didn't know how to end the film. Would have liked much more tension and suspense (which were generally very lacking), scares could have been more consistent and much more (what there was was predictable and cheap) and generally weren't surprising enough.

Found too the script to lack natural flow and with a lot of cheese, repetition and padding going on, and the characters bland with some adopting some annoying and not always logical decision making. The support acting in particular is even more problematic than the second half's storytelling, at best it was poor and too often terrible.

Overall, weak but could have been worse. 3/10 Bethany Cox

basically a puppet master spin off

[adriennemcqueen-15458 · 5/10 · 1 September 2017]

feels so much like the puppet master films especially the recent ones which were cheap and set in world war 2. but although it feels very familiar it has some entertaining scenes especially the ones with the evil colonel and his dumb nazi sidekicks. if your looking for a period world war film with class this is not it but if you want to leave your brain at the door and laugh at some dolls stabbing Nazis you will like this.

Over padded plot overshadowing main point & purpose of film!

[vengeance20 · 3/10 · 13 April 2018]

Bought this thinking it was the 3rd film & of course another sequel to see if the film franchise of Robert the Doll COULD get any better. This film acts as a part Part 1 of the final film, similar to that of the last 2 sequels to The Hunger Games! I thought this film would be a spin off in a way, but it had Robert i it so I took it to be apart of that franchise. The film seems to be in that pivot of being either not much better than the previous one or a hell of a lot worse!

This film goes back in time to 1941 Nazi Germany, the time of the 2nd World War. A family harbour a man carrying a book & the German SAS Agents are hunting him down, because he is the "enemy of the state". The family succeed in hiding him though know nothing about the book the man is carrying or it's contents. But the next day the agents arrive back with their boss & kill the family, knowing they were harbouring the man (who also dies too). The daughter then gets shot also but flees & dies from her injuries in a toy shop of dolls in a small village (rolls eyes) in front of a decrepit old man, who resembles Hugo! The man reads the book thinking it's nothing but discovers it's a spell book which brings dolls back to life, this includes yours truly & 2 others! But the agents are still hunting for the girl & capture the old man only for the dolls to come back & kills the agents holding their master!

That's the plot in a nut shell there, but the film itself is so over padded with story-line, that you forget what the film is about! It misses the point, you'd think it were an entirely different film! The killer doll theme seems lost & blurred in this over padded film with plot points & story! There's a few deaths which to be fair are better than the first 2 films which lacked in that department!

But the films theme & overall pacing seems to drag & you only saw a few minutes of killer dolls & murders, which even then, seemed to be uncreative & tame at best despite the bloody content!

The film seems to hang in a limbo. Which is why I'm not too sure what to rate it, but I'd have to say it's not a major improvement any more than it's predecessors.

It's tough but I think a 3/10 is as fair as it gets with this film!

funny

[januswallace · 8/10 · 13 September 2017]

Its hard to dislike a film which doesn't take itself very seriously like this one. me and my husband thought it was really funny with the doll doing the mickey taking Nazi salute and the Nazi boss getting stabbed in the naughty bits. it was all just a lot of fun with a silly story you don't have to think too much about.

Robert's at it again.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 6/10 · 3 May 2022]

I'll be honest, I haven't been overly impressed with some of the films from this franchise, but they're not all bad, and this is one of the better ones.

It's atmospheric as opposed to creepy, it relies more on the menace brought by the Naxi uniform, as opposed to Annabelle style horror, please don't expect any of the latter.

The acting is a mixed bag, but I'm going to commend Erick Hayden for his role as The Colonel, I thought he played the part well, he was measured, and arguably more chilling than Robert.

On the downside, The Toymaker's makeup looks like it was supplied by Primary School children, it's shabby and ill fitting, a contrast to The Nazi uniforms which look realistic. Robert, once again his little steps are quite funny, he needed a little more mobility.

It didn't have much of a budget, but they did a decent job with what they had, I think it looks pretty nice, the lighting is good, it flows pretty well.

So it's not a big story with a plausible beginning, middle and end, it's more like a snippet, but overall it adds to the overall story of Robert.

I didn't mind this one, 6/10.

Cringe overload

[fridanasman · 1/10 · 30 April 2022]

This is one of the worst movies I ever seen. The script was horrible, and most of it felt unnecessary.

Every scene was to long. And the costumes were so bad it hurt, like it was made by a child. The old mans face and "baldcap" looked all gluey and messy. How can there be so many movies about this?

Great made movie

[dy38493 · 3/10 · 16 May 2020]

Good movie to watch for especially the horror scenes and also the robert toy the movie is well set in nazis period of drama the movie is good to watch.

ZZZZZZZ

[aarojenny · 1/10 · 20 May 2022]

I can not begin to describe how boring this movie actually is. It is to the point where my friend has fallen asleep. The only fun part of this movie is Robert and he doesn't really do anything untill half way through this movie and the reason I think it's fun is purely because the way Robert is moved looks insanely stupid.

Bad, worse, this movie

[den-dhondt · 1/10 · 12 May 2022]

What the hell did I just watch?

I think most 10-year olds can make a better movie using a nokia 3310 to film it (yes I know it didn't have a camera, that's just how bad this movie is).

The beginning was promising, but that's about it.

Jeez, this was bad.

[evulone · 1/10 · 7 May 2022]

Long and boring scenes, probably meant to be dramatic and beautiful, leads to this old man (worst makeup-job in a loong time), and his helper, and... well, let's just say that the make-up done on the old man was the best part of the movie.

I have no idea why the first half of the movie was about a family that doesn't need to be in the movie, at all.

A dissapointingly lazy film in every possible respect

[fywhocares · 1/10 · 15 July 2022]

Oh, it's just so, so, so bad. There's over half an hour of trying to rip off the opening of Inglourious Basterds, but with appaling acting. This in a film that is supposedly about a haunted doll. It is the third film in a series that seems to have no particular interest in ensuring that there is anything here that is good quality, at all. There's basic mistakes, the supposedly German accents go wandering all over the place to the extent that any competent director would just have told the actors to stop and try the scene again. There is no care or quality in the special effects, or make-up. The 'old toymaker' makeup is, in particular, staggeringly poor.

I really need to stress, this is not a film or series of films that are entertainingly bad. This is a film that thinks you are an idiot and they don't even have to bother putting any effort in, as you'll watch it regardless.

Totally without merit

[Leofwine_draca · 1/10 · 1 June 2022]

Well, they went backwards with this sequel. It's a WW2 era story and the whole first half feels like it rips off the opening of Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS - except it's deadly dull. Then we get a lame copy of PUPPET MASTER for our sins. Totally without merit, unfortunately...

Just horribly boring...

[paul_haakonsen · 2/10 · 31 December 2018]

Right, well truth be told then I had absolutely no expectations to this movie, so I entered with a blank canvas, free to be impressed and entertained.

Except that was something that "The Toymaker" movie failed to do on every account. I endured 31 minutes of this ordeal before I simply gave up from sheer and utter boredom.

First of all, it is a movie set in Nazi Germany, yet everybody speaks English with that atrocious horrible assimilated German accent. Then came the big old Nazi bad guy speaking English with something that sounded like a bad French accent. It was just so bad and so abysmal to listen to. Either speak proper German, or at least have all actors capable of sustaining an accent that actually sounds like that mock generic German accent we all know.

The thing that made me quit on "The Toymaker", aside from the accent issue, and the apparent lack of a proper storyline, was when I saw the old man. Wow, talk about using fake props. It was just laughable to look at. So clearly a horrible and poor discount clown wig trimmed down he was wearing, and that beard dangling from his chin, are you kidding me? It looks so fake that even a blind man would do "for real?"

This was a snoozefest of unfathomable magnitude, and I have absolutely no intention to return to watch the rest of the movie because "The Toymaker" had absolutely nothing of any interest to me.

Better than expected

[jonniekendall · 8/10 · 22 August 2017]

I'm not really into these types of films but I enjoyed this far more than I expected ...the acting was excellent , especially the Nazi officers display ...worth watching ! The story line is good, the filming very good, and the acting excellent . These Robert films have a strong loyal following , and they are getting better as the series develops, and the special effects are improved .

Expanding the Robert mythology

[dennisgranger · 6/10 · 28 August 2017]

After the modern day setting of the first two films this prequel takes us back to Nazi Germany to tell the origin story of Robert the doll. The first film didn't offer a lot of explanation for the doll's reanimation but a glimpse of a sinister toymaker character at the end of the first sequel promised an expanding of the mythology and this third film delivers that. We are introduced to a mysterious book the Nazis want which brings toys to life and we get to know the origin of the Toymaker character and how he first brought the doll to life. Its not without its flaws mostly due to the rough edges you expect from a low budget indie film but there is more effort to provide an actual story in this film which is much needed after the bear bone story of the first two films. The acting is also an improvement on the previous films. A solid 6 out of 10 for me.

Caught By Surprise

[josemartinezlopez534 · 5/10 · 1 April 2018]

It it really good for a small production with what they have. Acting are durable and a little passed beginners. The story is interestingly hooking, If this was a book Im sure alot of people would read it. Speaking of books the story is kinda cheesy like the goosebumps books and series.

Excruciatingly Boring

[injury-65447 · 2/10 · 24 August 2020]

I can't believe I made it through the whole film. An absolute snoozefest packed with filler and stultifying dialogue. Maybe it would work as a 15 minute short film but this was just painful to sit through.

It's not so bad it's good. Just boring.

It did get a few chuckles out of me from the terrible acting of the soldiers. Also, the dolls do look nice and creepy. Shame nothing interesting is done with them.

Beyond Bad

[bruce-tregoning · 1/10 · 29 March 2024]

A hideous film from start to finish. A cast of nobodies excel at producing one of the worst films of all time. It's worrying when the real WW II black and white footage bookending the start and end of the film is a lot more interesting than anything in between. Like in Robert parts 1 and 2, we have a camera constantly in the faces of every actor and nauseating gurning alongside cringingly bad German accents at every opportunity. Every sentence of the amateurish script takes forever to deliver, to the point that I could have fallen asleep for 10 minutes in every scene and woken up having missed nothing.

A bunch of mean Nazis (surprise) with ill fitting fancy dress shop uniforms are defeated by 3 one foot high dolls wielding 3inch kindergarten pencils and blunt "knives" the size of corn cobb skewers after being brought to life by a 5 second incantation from a school exercise book. It has the worst make up of all time; including a 30yr old pretending to be in his 70's by wearing a plastic domed bowl glued on his head to make him "bald" after sticking fake white poodle hair around the rim. It's also stupefyingly boring. How did it even get made? If I was told it was written and filmed by 4 year olds I would have believed you. Avoid like the plague!