MIRACLE IN TOYLAND (2000)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

I confess I was made aware of this forgotten piece of kidvid-entertainment by a YouTube podcast making fun of its many shortcomings. I can't equal the video's many on-target slams of the subpar animation, so I'll focus on the story's problems.

Middle-schooler Jesse Justice apparently lives alone with his father (no clue if his mother is dead or what), and his cousin Gabrielle lives not far away in the same city. Father Daniel Justice is a colonel in the Air Force and is involved in training exercises so rigorous that he can't even take off for Christmas-- not that he shows any desire of wanting to do so, being blithely unconcerned with his boy's existence. Off goes the Colonel, leaving Jesse with Gabrielle.

At school Jesse acts out, getting rough with his schoolmates in soccer. Gabrielle guesses that he's overcompensating for his father's inattention and tries to cheer him up by taking Jesse to a big toy store, the Toyland of the title. The most interesting exchange of the mediocre flick takes place here, as Jesse disavows any interest in toys, wanting to get military training to be more like his dad. At Toyland, Jesse acts out again, and Gabrielle-- despite showing an attitude correctly called "touchy-feely" with her cuz-- leaves him behind. Jesse falls asleep in the toy store and gets locked in.

So far this isn't a bad setup for your basic "toys come to life" scenario, so in due course Jesse meets (1) a superhero named Super Duper Man, (2) a thick-eared wrestler, Bonecrusher, (3) a hip military commander, Captain Agro, (4) a peg-legged pirate, (5) an elf girl who talks like Betty Boop, and (5) a relatively mature-seeming Indian princess who sings Gospel. (Is she from something like American Girl, or what? Either way, she seems like the maternal figure missing from Jesse's life.)

 What's odd is that the story doesn't stick with helping Jesse work through his issues. After the toys make Jesse's acquaintance, Captain Agro suddenly calls up his toy soldiers to make an assault on-- someone. But out of nowhere, one of the soldiers get injured (somehow) and Agro tells Jesse to stay behind and watch over a fellow warrior. Jesse wants glory to validate himself as he thinks his father would want, so he deserts his post to go look for the enemy (which we never see) and the injured toy-- dies? Agro dresses Jesse down a little, and Jesse maybe learns a lesson-- at which point the script decides it can't handle the seriousness. So then out of nowhere, some bad pirate-toys hijack the good pirate's ship, so Jesse and his toy buddies have a very mild fight quelling this threat. Even the two girls get a little action: Boop-Elf clubs a bad pirate and Gospel Indian hits another pirate with-- a karate chop? Sure, why not. Then there's some business about getting chocolate treats for everyone. Oh, and Boop-Elf gets an upskirt shot.

Jesse somehow transitions back to the real world, finds Gabrielle and apologizes to her. But the desire for heroism has only been deferred. Jesse and his cuz learn that Colonel Justice, flying a plane alone for some reason, has been lost in the frozen mountains. Jesse appeals to the toys for help, and they enlarge themselves to life-size with some magic or other, as well as creating convenient transportation. So Jesse gets to save his dad from the frozen wastes, and Colonel Justice beholds the power of a child's imagination in the reality of the living toys-- though in truth, Jesse was originally rejecting the world of imagination for that of worldly glory. If anything, the toys more or less forced their way into Jesse's closed off existence. They're more like the manifestation of what Gabrielle knows Jesse needs with her feminine instinct. Jesse then gets a maternal hug from Gospel Indian while all the toys have a big musical finish-- I *think* after they revert to their toy-existence, but I'm not sure.

I think the real miracle is that there's even a little content worth explicating in this ramshackle script-- though even little kids would be better advised to play with actual toys, than with TOYLAND.