Keanu Reeves Sings

I’ve always been ambivalent about Babes In Toyland. I know it exists in several forms, including the charming 1961 movie starring Annette Funicello and Tommy Sands and the original 1934 movie of the same title, which was based on a 1903 operetta.

Then there’s the 1986 Babes In Toyland, starring Drew Barrymore, Keanu Reeves, Eileen Brennan, Richard Mulligan, and Pat Morita. I was ten years old when this movie came out, a little younger than Drew Barrymore, so I would have been on the older end of this movie’s target demographic. Did I watch it back then? I doubt it. Would my ten year old self have liked this movie? Uh, well…

The movie opens on a winter night in Cincinnati, where Lisa is busy reading a Better Homes and Gardens cookbook and watching the weather reports on the news. Her sister, Mary (Jill Schoelen) is about to head off to work at the toy store, and her mom, Mrs. Piper (Eileen Brennan) is out with her little brother, Joey (Chad Carlson) at a service station, where they’re waiting to get chains put on the car.

Still, Lisa isn’t worried, because she’s used to cooking and taking care of the family. Mary doesn’t think Lisa does kid stuff often enough, and tells her she bought her a super-fancy new sled.

Lisa’s excited, of course, but she’s got to get back to making dinner. She’s back to watching the news and whisking something that looks like pancake batter when the TV antenna gets knocked over. And the phones go out. And there’s a huge blizzard coming. There’s nothing to do but hightail it down to the toystore, where Barnie (Richard Mulligan) the store owner, is trying and failing to sexually harass Mary, who finally tells him off.

Mary’s crush, Jack (Keanu Reeves) and his buddy, George (Googy Gress) quit as well, and in a stroke of genius Lisa grabs the store PA microphone and informs the entire store that Barnie is a jerk and that there’s a gigantic blizzard heading for Cincinnati. Naturally, Barnie grabs the mic and tells everyone that everything is fine before making an extremely lame attempt at singing. If the guy wanted to keep his customers in the store, singing into the PA was probably not the best move.

Anyway, Lisa, Mary, Jack and George bounce on home in Jack’s Jeep, with Lisa’s new sled stowed someplace, and believe it or not, they decide to belt out an ode to Cincinnati which has to be heard to be believed, so here we go.

Keanu is doing his own singing. Drew is not.

Driving in snow is hazardous, though, and Lisa and the sled get knocked out, Lisa slides down the hill, crashes into a tree, and goes unconscious, waking up in Toyland.

Anyone getting Oz vibes here? Yeah, they come thick and fast. The music over the Jeep scene sounds like the Miss Gulch theme from the 1939 movie, as does the trajectory. As in, “And you, and you, and you, and you were there.”

Lisa finds that Mary Contrary (Mary) is being forced to marry resident baddie Barnaby (Barnie) because her mother, The Old Woman In the Shoe (Mary and Lisa’s mother) can’t pay her mortgage and she’s using her daughter as a bargaining chip. Everyone’s going along with it because they’re afraid of Barnaby, but Lisa isn’t, and against the urging of Georgie Porgie (George), she breaks up the wedding and tells Barnaby off.

Barnaby, along with his two henchmen, one of whom bears a remarkable resemblance to Nosferatu, head back to Barnaby’s house, which is a giant bowling ball on a hillside. Jack (Jack), Mary’s real love, explains to Lisa that he’ll inherit the local cookie factory provided he’s married by his twenty-first birthday. If not, the factory goes to Barnaby, Jack’s uncle.

Yeah, about Barnaby. That bowling ball he lives in is like the Toyland version of Snoopy’s doghouse in that it’s got a really big basement. Only instead of a pool table and a Van Gogh painting Barnaby’s bowling ball has a dungeon and a dark, dank forest and nefarious activities take place there. Barnaby wants to take over Toyland, of course, and Lisa and her friends are the biggest obstacles in his way.

Would ten-year old me have liked this movie? Possibly. It’s got romance, it’s got music, it’s got people in crazy costumes, it would have had someone who was roughly my age in the lead. Plus Keanu Reeves is really cute and goofy. It’s fun, especially nowadays, to hear him singing, and this obviously would have been before he played Ted ‘Theodore” Logan.

The Wizard of Oz callbacks are a bit too blatant, though. Lisa goes to Toyland in a dream, the townies parade her around in a cart when she defeats Barnaby a la Dorothy’s house falling on the Wicked Witch of the East, only Barnaby doesn’t die or lose a pair of magic shoes. Lisa and her friends have to stage an expedition to Barnaby’s bowling ball to defeat Barnaby, only there aren’t any flying monkeys or signs telling them to turn back.

Babes’ music also sounds suspiciously like the MGM movie, only cheaper and hackneyed. I wonder if ten-year old me would have been annoyed by that. Present-day me doesn’t have time for annoyance, though. Maybe just an eye-roll or two.

Actually, no, I take it back: The overall amateurish look of this movie is pretty annoying and the story feels contrived, not to mention the costumes look as if they were rented from a theme park.

In case it isn’t plain here, I’m really trying to be diplomatic, not only because I know Babes In Toyland is a favorite childhood movie for a lot of people, but I was in this film’s target audience when it was new, and the nostalgia is off the charts.

I wish Hollywood still made movies like this for kids. The more jaded adult me, however, isn’t too impressed. It all makes for a weird tug-of-war, with the very promising Keanu Reeves right in the middle.

Another post is on the way tomorrow, and it may bring up more 1980s memories for those of us who lived through that wonderful decade. Kind of. For anyone who didn’t, well, it’ll still be an experience. Anyway, thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you then…

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