What might have been a nice story about a struggle between good and evil toys is let down by a small, but crippling, flaw: the "good" toys aren't. Sure, the Zevo factory turned out no guns, no replicas of World War Two tanks, no violent arcade games. Their toys lacked all traces of violence - a virtue, but an entirely negative virtue. There wasn't anything GOOD about the oversized, sticky-coloured plastic, ugly, gimmicky trash that they sold to children, and there was no disguising this. Most of the toys looked as if they wouldn't be out of place in a horror movie about demonic animated dolls. All looked crude and under-designed. How can we be expected to cheer for them?
Likewise, while the Zevo factory was no doubt meant to be a cheerful, progressive workplace, it comes across as a totalitarian nightmare. It's hard to avoid the impression that employees are FORCED to smile and dance all the time. The decor alone probably makes them want to scream. It has a similar effect on me. After a while I just couldn't stand this world consisting of colours that children are supposed to like: cadmium red, bright yellow, middlebrow blue. Maybe very small children DO like these colours. They also like pure sugar crystals, and for much the same reason.
The basic story is a strong one and it's all that makes the film watchable. It IS watchable. But you have to look behind almost every frame and pretend, against the evidence of your senses, that Zevo's factory is worth preserving. You also have to ignore Robin William's inappropriate performance, Robin Wright's sickening and extraneous character, and the fact that, every so often, for no reason whatever, the film becomes a music video. I'm not joking. I don't simply mean that the editing is bad: I mean that the film actually lapses, literally, into music video, much as "West Side Story" lapses into song and dance - except that in "West Side Story" it isn't a lapse.
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