Toys (1992) More at IMDbPro »

It's hard to think of a movie that divides its audience as deeply as "Toys" does. Few people will say this movie is "fair." Instead, people often call it the best movie ever made or the worst... and they mean it!

Even its severest critics grudgingly admit that it's visually stunning and has perhaps the best soundtrack of the decade ("Happy Worker" is a classic, and "At the Closing of the Year" is, in my opinion, the best Christmas song written in the past 30 years). It's clearly Oscar-worthy in the categories of music and set design.

Most people who've seen it agree that Joan Cusack's quirky characterization is wonderful and that the vignettes provided Robin Williams with a springboard for some of the best ad libs of his career. And the story, a whimsical fable of innocence versus corruption, is as unlikely to give offense as any you can name. So, you'd expect the movie's critics to say "I didn't care for it," instead of "Everyone associated with this movie should be ashamed!"

When I like something and others don't, I hesitate to say they don't "get it," but in the case of "Toys," it really is true. It's no coincidence that many visual references to the work of Rene Magritte keep popping up. "Toys" is a surrealist movie, and like any work of surrealism, it has a simple veneer over a more sophisticated message, one that defies explanation and works on the level of a dream. This movie is more "Mulholland Drive" than "Willie Wonka."

Whether you will like this movie depends entirely on how your mind works. Poets will probably love it. Engineers will probably hate it.