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Reviews
Babes in Toyland (1986)
THIS IS A WARNING
Whenever someone gives you, the parent of a child under 10, a video, check to make sure that it isn't this movie. If someone does give you "Babes in Toyland", there are only a few explanations:
1. They meant to give you another version of it--there are several, and all of them are better than this one.
2. They meant to give you another movie altogether and accidentally picked this one up.
3. It made its own way into a batch of tapes to be delivered, so it's not their fault.
4. They were misinformed about its quality.
5. They secretly hate your guts and want to torture you.
Conversely, if you know some parents of small children whose guts you hate, just give them a copy of this movie. You'll be giving your feelings towards them away, but they'll be stuck watching this movie for years on end.
Children love this movie. They LOVE this movie. But it's so very, very bad that after just one or two viewings you will have fantasies of tracking down the cast and crew and demanding compensation, at which they will get down on their knees and beg your forgiveness for their involvement in this hideous torture.
It really is that bad. The story is ludicrous. The "music" is excruciating (especially the "Cincinnati" song). The writing is beyond awful. The direction isn't even imaginatively bad (anyone could do as well, probably better). The costumes and sets are so bad they aren't even funny: you can see the zippers in the bear costumes--hilarious, no?
With all of this working against them, I almost feel sorry for the actors. Sure, they're bad, but there was no way they could be any good at all in this movie. You alternate between pity for them and anger at them for their participation in it. I just hope they needed the money or the credit or something.
And it lasts FOREVER. Most kids' movies only last an hour or so; this one goes on and on and on and on and on....
The fanatical devotion that it inspires in children is frightening. Kids have no taste; this is the proof. To be avoided at all costs.
The Silver Brumby (1993)
A beautiful horse film
Well, in my continuing quest to see every movie Russell Crowe was ever in, I stumbled across this little film. (As long as I'm disclosing biases, I might as well mention that I have not read Elyne Mitchell's novel.)
It is a film for children--specifically, girls ages 8-12 or so who love horses. And they will love it. Younger children may be disturbed by some of the content; these are wild horses trying to survive in the wild, in all weather and situations.
It's framed as a fable, with Elyne Mitchell (Caroline Goodall) writing a story for her daughter Indi (Amiel Daemion) about Thowra, the great silver brumby, and the Man (Russell Crowe) who wants to tame him.
It's meant to be a fable, which explains how all these wild horses are so beautifully groomed. The horses also occasionally seem to be deaf, since they fail to react at all to sounds that any horse would prick its ears at.
As a horse film, it's highly successful. We see lots of lovely horses, doing fascinating horse things. The horse part of the movie is perfectly developed.
The humans are more troublesome. I suspect that Mrs. Mitchell and her daughter were not characters in the book; adding them causes a fundamental shift in the relationships between the characters. Instead of relationships between Thowra and other horses (especially the Brolga, his archrival) and between Thowra and the Man, the most important relationships are those between humans (between the two Mitchells, between Indi and the various men who catch and tame brumbies) and between humans and nature, with the relationships among the horses and of the humans to the horses receding into the background.
Instead of a simple pair of conflicts--between Thowra and the Brolga (the natural challenge); between Thowra and the Man (the unnatural challenge)--we get instead a large number of relationships, which changes the entire dynamic.
Despite these problems, the new concept could have worked, if simplified a bit. The basic point is that both Indi and the Man love Thowra, and for the same reasons: he is beautiful, strong, proud, and free. However, because Indi loves Thowra, she wants him to remain free; because the Man loves Thowra, he wants to own and tame the horse.
Such a conflict could have provided ample opportunity for lessons on "listening to the bush" and on the difference and inherent contradiction between love and possession (etc., etc.).
In the film, however, the Mitchells dominate. Elyne gives her daughter lessons on nature and life, with the help of an injured kangaroo they find, which serves to teach that wild things belong in the wild, that if you truly care about something you give it its freedom--all lessons that could have been communicated via the story of Thowra. (I loved the kangaroo, but it wasn't necessary.) Meanwhile, the Man is underdeveloped, and sometimes demonized--which runs entirely counter to the purpose of the film. The Man is not evil, just obsessed.
The filmmakers undoubtedly decided to focus on the girl and her mother because that's their audience. A reasonable decision, and yet one which weakens the film.
Overall, a nice, solid horse film which should be very popular with its target audience.