Babes in Toyland (1986)

How head wounds make you happy to live in Cincinnati.

Now that the Yuletide has passed, I think it’s finally safe to expose this thing to the light of day. I’d originally intended it as our Christmas special, but when I first sat through this movie it gave me seasonal holiday depression in July, and that seemed like a lousy gift for you guys. (Although I’m excited to discover it’s actually possible to regift despair.) Anyway, it’s a heart-warming family classic that features Keanu Reeves, Drew Barrymore, and a concussion.

Babes in Toyland (1986)
Directed by Clive Donner
Written by Paul Zindel

Don’t get your hopes up. This is not the 1934 Laurel and Hardy version. It’s not even the 1961 Annette Funicello–Ray Bolger remake. In fact, it doesn’t even use the Victor Herbert score, replacing the classic show tunes with music and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse (who was also responsible for the songs—such as “Patch? Natch!”—in 1985’s Santa Claus, so nobody can claim he wasn’t on a streak, although you could technically say the same thing about Charles Starkweather).

It’s snowing hard in the little town of Backlot, U.S.A. Eleven year old Drew Barrymore is reading her mama's cookbook, wearing her apron, and—judging by her jaundiced face and sunken eyes— using her grandfather John Barrymore’s liver.

Drew is a no-nonsense little girl who has put away childish things. She has no use for toys, spending all her time cooking, cleaning, looking after her older sister Mary, and plotting to assassinate their mother and assume her identity. But while Mom is out, probably buying a gun for self-defense, a howling blizzard blows over the TV antenna and knocks down the telephone lines, leaving Drew trapped, isolated, and unable to call for help, raising our hopes that Ghostface from Scream will get to her before she starts singing.  Instead, she dons her jacket and runs out into the freezing cornstarch.

Cut to a toy store, where clerk Keanu Reeves is hitting on Drew’s sister Mary by brandishing a swan-shaped hemorrhoid cushion. But before he can deploy it as a sex toy, Drew bursts into the store to inform Mary that the power is out, a blizzard is about to hit town, and she should hurry home where it’s safe, dark, and frigid. Then night manager Richard Mulligan sexually harasses Mary while Drew squats under the checkout stand. But the two sisters are so full of the Christmas spirit that they immediately forget about the near molestation and pile into Keanu’s jeep so he can drive them around in a blinding snowstorm while everyone sings a song about how to spell Cincinnati.

Keanu swerves suddenly and Drew flies out the back of the vehicle, slides down a hill, and crashes into a pine tree.  She dies instantly, or has a low budget, Made for TV out-of-body experience, because a moment later she’s floating in the clouds, above a pastel colored planned community occupied by bored extras in hoop skirts, and various minor league ball club mascots.

Whee…

Drew crash lands in a giant wedding cake while a man in a pig mask and a humanoid frog in a bonnet gaze at her with their pitiless black eyes.  (In Drew's defense, I think we’ve all had that dream.)

Keanu’s Pudgy Comic Relief Friend™ from the store walks up to Drew wearing tight pants with a double-breasted groin flap, and offers her a cookie.  Shortly after this scene was shot, creative differences erupted, and original director Roman Polanski walked off the film.

Comic Relief Friend also tempts Drew with some exposition: It seems Toyland and it’s creepy, Wind in the Willows knock-off inhabitants are ruled by Richard Mulligan, who is “so evil, and so bizarre,” that he’s forcing Mary Contrary to marry him (in this version of the tale Mary is still a teenager, so she’s not Quite Contrary yet, just mildly argumentative).  But Mary is in love with poor but honest Keanu. Basically it’s the same plot as The Princess Bride, but with less fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love and miracles, and more of those costumes people wear when they stand on street corners spinning signs for discount electronics stores.

Mary and Keanu can’t elope because Toyland is surrounded by the Forest of the Night, which isn’t as dangerous as the Fire Swamp—no fire spurts, lightning sands, or Rodents of Unusual Size—but the trees constantly sing “Music of the Night” from Phantom of the Opera, so it’s no picnic.

Richard shows up for the non-consensual nuptials sporting a witch’s costume repurposed from the Knott’s Berry Farm Halloween Spooktacular Show, and attended by his two henchmen, Max Shreck and Riff Raff. His third minion, Copyright Infringement Lawyer, was unable to attend.

Sadly, the minister doesn’t say “Mawwige,” however he does read a message from the “Toy Master” about true love. But when he starts to pronounce them man and wife, Drew fails to hold her peace, and suddenly the wedding is off! Comic Relief sings a song about how Drew is “the girl of the week,” while Richard storms into his bowling ball-shaped house, which is filled with sphagnum moss and Sleestaks, and consults with his chief-of-staff, a cycloptic hobo penguin.

It seems Keanu is the rightful manager of the Toyland Cookie Factory, but after his father’s death, his uncle—Richard!—usurped his position, allowing Keanu to ruin Hamlet years before he got around to stinking up Much Ado About Nothing.

Cut to the Cookie Factor, where Comic Relief is the Official Taster and apparently loves his job, because he bites into a snickerdoodle and has a shivering, violent orgasm that nearly causes his pants flap to pop like a ruptured boiler.

Richard frames his nephew for cookie theft, and Keanu is carted away in the riot wagon (a Disneyland parking lot tram) and thrown in the Pastel Pink Hole of Calcutta.

Things look grim for our hero (is he our hero? And if so, is there some sort of appeals process?), except they break him out of jail in the very next scene. Drew bores the magistrate by talking about Cincinnati, while Mary and Comic Relief unlock the cell door. Keanu is grateful, kissing Mary and telling CR that he’s fat. Meanwhile, Drew locks the magistrate in a cell, and since he’s the only one on duty at the jail, we presume that he will slowly waste away until he resembles the Forgotten Prisoner of Castle Mare from those old Aurora model kits.

They go to see the Toymaster, Mr. Miyagi, who is employed as a sub-contractor by Santa to make all the toys for all the children in the world after underbidding the Elves. But the toys are actually made by Mr. Miyagi’s laborers, who look like Amish Whos, and you get what you pay for, because the Whomish can’t even paint eyes on a doll, instead cranking out a succession of deathly pale, pupil-less playthings that resemble the eponymous characters from Tombs of the Blind Dead. Merry Christmas!

Mr. Miyagi shows Drew, Mary, and Keanu a cabinet full of life-size, cobwebbed wooden soldiers which he will presumably imbue with unholy life at some point before the last commercial break. He also tells the kids that he’s been siphoning the world’s supply of evil, distilling it down to its essence, and storing it in an old Chianti bottle, which he hopes no one breaks. Okay so now it’s the ancient Greek creation myth, except Pandora has been replaced by Ernest and Julio Gallo.

Keanu and Mary get themselves captured and imprisoned in Richard’s bowling ball.  Drew and CR go to Mr. Miyagi to complain about it, but are interrupted when Richard and his knock-off minions stage a home invasion. They perform some Japanese-style jump rope bondage on Drew, then Richard steals the bottle of Evil Rosé, and leaves her to be molested by the Hobo Penguin Cyclops. It flaps and squawks and humps her, but she manages to slip free somehow and untie the others, and then they blind the thing just as Ulysses and his men did to Polyphemus. Merry Christmas, kids!

Drew and Comic Relief grab a couple of pink baseball bats and march into the forest to bust some heads. But they fall down a hole and into what looks like Sid and Marty Krofft’s lower G.I. tract, where they find Keanu and Mary. Richard is waving his bottle and going on about how he’s going to conquer Toyland with “evil vapors.” So basically, his plans for world domination could be foiled with a bathroom fan.

“He’s got trolls,” Keanu drones. “Hundreds of evil trolls!” We cut to Richard’s army, and…Well, he’s got two members of the Screen Extras Guild in repurposed Sleestak suits. But Richard uncorks the bottle, and tells them that the green vapor will turn them all into trolls. Unfortunately, that would require special effects, or at least a costume change, so Drew tells them all to fight it with the power of municipal nomenclature, and they sing about how to spell Cincinnati again, which makes them immune to chemical warfare.

Our heroes run for it, twisting and turning through the dark tunnels, pursued by Richard, although the whole thing feels less like a chase scene and more like a colonoscopy. But despite their evasive maneuvers, Richard manages to track them by sniffing Drew’s pheromone trail, which reeks of sugar and spice.

They make it to Toyland, as though anyone cares, but Richard is right behind them, snarling, “I’ll kick the giggles out of their heart!” They hop into some pastel go-carts and stage a car chase that makes Driving Miss Daisy look like Buillit. It goes on for awhile, with the cast driving in lazy circles while Richard shouts, “The little one—I want her!  I want the little one!” until it seems like NAMBLA went co-ed and celebrated with a trip to the Disneyland Autopia.

Drew, Keanu, and Mary run to Mr. Miyagi for help, but since Drew doesn’t believe in toys, they’re screwed. He reveals that the only way to defeat Richard and his army of Land of the Lost leftovers is for Drew to “believe in Toyland, and all it stands for.”  Mostly pig masks and pedophilia.

Then Mr. Miyagi lip syncs a song about some pointless crap while trying to touch her with a disturbing clown puppet. Drew declares, “I want to believe! I guess life just made me grow up too fast!” Well, life and booze and drugs and cigarettes, but luckily for Toyland, the ontology of toys is the answer to sex- and narcotic-fueled precociousness!

“I kept my teddy!” Drew suddenly blurts.

“Did you hear that everyone,” Comic Relief grins.  “She kept her teddy!”

“Yes! I kept my teddy!”

So she’s all set for Hef’s lingerie party in the Sleestak Grotto after the film wraps. Cool.

As expected, Drew’s innocent, child-like faith brings the toy soldiers to a grim, shambling mockery of life, and we anxiously await a Battle Royale of badly fabricated costumes.

Meanwhile, the pork-faced furries who inhabit the town build a barricade to hold off the monsters in a scene that’s highly evocative of Les Misérables, except the ticket prices are more reasonable.  Richard’s troops wander toward the camera, but in a twist the mechanical Toy Soldiers show up with rifles and artillery, and suddenly Toyland is less FAO Schwartz and more Kent State.  The soulless automatons open fire indiscriminately, proving that the Three Laws of Robotics don’t protect Sleestaks, then we cut to the post-massacre wedding of Mary and Keanu.

The children’s choir accompanying the ceremony promise “the happiest marriage that anyone ever knew.”  Of course, back in Cincinnati, the wedding of their real life counterparts will be more of a shotgun affair when Keanu knocks up 17-year old Mary, and she winds up working two jobs after he rolls his Jeep, fractures his pelvis and becomes addicted to Percocet.

But wait!  Who’s that showing up just before the end credits to justify calling this mess a Christmas movie? Why, it’s Santa Claus, in his magical sleigh pulled by a team of six reindeer cut-outs made from unfinished plywood! Except Santa is actually Mr. Miyagi, and now I’m waiting for him to pull that “wax on, wax off” scam with Drew, his sleigh, and a tin of Turtle Wax.

Drew hops aboard for the trip back to Cincinnati.

Back in the real world, we see that Keanu and Mary didn’t take Drew to the Emergency Room after her near-fatal collision with the tree, but just hauled her home and dumped her unconscious ass on the damp, stained sofa.  Because the best treatment for a subarachnoid hemorrhage is mildew.

Drew wakes up and does the whole Wizard of Oz and-you-were-there-and-you-where-there bit, while somewhere overhead, Santa Miyagi’s sleigh and his six motionless, two-dimensional reindeer fly jerkily across the moon as he cries out, “A low budget Christmas to all!  And to all, a cheap night!”

P.S Before anyone mentions it, yes, I did notice the film was written by Paul Zindel, who snagged a Pulitzer for his first play, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, and also wrote the beloved Pigman trilogy of young adult novels. I thought about reaching for an Effect of Gamma Rays joke at one point, but the connection was just too depressing. I also briefly considered a reference to And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little (if only because Miss Reardon has a foolproof method for surviving this film), before finally opting to pretend he wasn't involved.

To be fair to director Clive Donner, my wife enjoys his version of A Christmas Carol starring George C. Scott, but Babes has left me bitter enough to point out that Donner also directed The Nude Bomb.