Musicals on TV - Babes In Toyland (1986)

Orion Television/NBC, 1986
Starring Drew Barrymore, Keanu Reeves, Jill Schoelen, and Richard Mulligan
Directed by Clive Donner
Music and Lyrics by Leslie Bricusse

And now, we go back a bit to give you NBC's big holiday offering for 1986. It made decent enough ratings then, but wasn't well-received, despite getting a theatrical release in Europe. Is this worth the sled trip to Toyland? Let's head to a snowy Cincinatti, Ohio to find out...

The Story: Lisa Piper (Barrymore) is an 11-year-old girl living in Cincinatti with her older sister Mary (Schoelen), her younger brother, and her harried single mother (Eileen Brennan). Lisa is used to being her mother's helper, which makes her feel quite adult. She takes it on herself to warn Mary and her guy friends Jack (Reeves) and George (Googy Gress) about a snowstorm on Christmas Eve, dashing to the toy store where they work. The store's sleazy owner Barney (Mulligan) wishes she'd go away, but she does manage to help her sister and the guys evacuate the building. They're on their way home in the thick of the blizzard when Lisa slides out on the new sled Mary gave her and hits a tree.

She awakens in Toyland, a magical world where teddy bears are cops and everyone rides around in cute, colorful little cars like something out of an amusement park. What she finds isn't as amusing. The evil Barnaby (Mulligan) is about to wed pretty young Mary Quite Contrary (Schoelen), who is trying to save her family from being evicted. Mary really loves Jack Be Nimble (Reeves). Lisa immediately stops the wedding, earning Barnaby's ire and that of Mary's dithery mother Mrs. Hubbard (Brennan).

Barnaby first accuses Jack of stealing cookies from his cookie factory and has him arrested. Lisa and Georgie Porgie (Gress) break Jack out, but Barnaby has another plot. He wants a Jar of Evil that the kindly Toymaker (Pat Moriata) has been collecting. He thinks that jar will give him enough power to take over Toyland and eliminate toys from the world! Lisa and her friends do their best to stop him...but in the end, it's up to Lisa to remember that one of the greatest weapons we can have is the ability to see the world through the eyes of a child.

The Song and Dance: There's some really cute ideas here. I love details like Barnaby's vulture-things with an eye that helps him keep track of his enemies and Mrs. Hubbard carrying around a list to remember every single thing she says or does. Lisa's attempts to play matchmaker to the two mid-way through are pretty funny, as is how they manage to break Jack out of jail. Barrymore does fairly well as the child who refuses to believe that she's still young; Mulligan's having a fine time chewing the scenery to atoms, both as the scuzzball toy store owner and the old-fashioned silent movie-style villain.

Favorite Number: The children's chorus song "May We Wish You the Happiest Christmas," performed as Lisa is making her way to the toy store in the opening, is reworked later in Toyland as a wedding song for Barnaby and Mary with almost the exact same lyrics. Not only is that a nice touch, but it perfectly emphasizes the Wizard of Oz-like feel the story is going for. Mulligan can't sing, but he throws himself into his big number "A World Without Toys" anyway.

Trivia: The version of this that I own (and that was released on video in 1991) is the shortened European theatrical version. The original TV broadcast included longer versions of some scenes and more numbers, including a duet for Mary and Jack when the latter is in jail.

What I Don't Like: Mulligan and Brennan are the only ones who seem to have any real grasp of the material. Keanu Reeves in particular does not belong here, and Schoelen is only slightly better. They both work better in the opening sequence at the toy store than in Toyland and have no chemistry whatsoever. Other than the joke with the "Happiest Christmas/Wedding" song, most of the music is bland and very far from Bricusse's best work. The only person in the cast who can actually sing - Brennan - doesn't. The dialogue is corny and forced, and the bored readings of many lines doesn't help.

The production looks incredibly cheap. The amusement park cars are more silly than whimsical, and the full-body costumes for the animal characters and toy soldiers were probably pulled off the rack from the nearest party store. The villainous characters are a little better. The designs of the trollogs (Barnaby's vulture-like minions), the trolls, and his mooks Mack and Zack are actually pretty scary. I just wish you could actually see them. Barnaby is supposed to live in a dark bowling ball in an evil forest, but the lighting is so dim, you can't really tell what's going on in those scenes.

The Big Finale: This is kind of a guilty pleasure of mine, and has been since it ran occasionally on the 25 Days of Christmas marathon on Fox Family Channel (now Freeform) in the early 2000's. I can't in all good faith recommend it to those who haven't built up an immunity to cheese or didn't grow up watching those Fox Family broadcasts. Unless you're a really huge fan of the cast or love campy or so-bad-they're (slightly) good movies, you'll want to give this one a pass.

Home Media: That 1991 video was sold at McDonald's as part of a big holiday VHS promotion in 1992. It's out of print, but still fairly easy to find. (I dubbed my copy off one of them.) To my knowledge, this has never been released on DVD or Blu-Ray in the US. It is free for downloading on Amazon Prime, and the original full TV version can be found on YouTube.

VHS
Amazon Prime
Babes In Toyland - The Director's Cut (YouTube)