When a director gets the chance to make a blank check project, it tends to be one of their more fascinating films in their body of work. Last year saw Ryan Coogler make Sinners, which was one of the most deeply layered and engaging films of 2025. The success of his Black Panther films allowed him to make a genre movie that was both a loving tribute to blues music and its cultural connection to black culture, and was also just an immensely well-crafted action-horror film. However, sometimes, when a director gets to make that one movie with all the time and money in the world, you get something bizarre and unwieldy. An artist being given the freedom to make their project uncompromised and unchained can sometimes lead to the result being unfocused and all over the place. No film in my mind encapsulates this scenario more than Barry Levinson’s 1992 film Toys.
By the 90s, Levinson had established himself as big name director in Hollywood. The mid to late 80s saw him produce movies that had been both financially successful and critically acclaimed. The peak of this was when he made Rain Man, which not only won both the Oscar for best picture and best director, but was the highest-grossing film of 1988. All of the success led him to be able to finally work on a project he had been kicking around since he started making movies. The script for Toys was conceived in 1979 after seeing a story about how the Soviets found information about US Navy submarines from toy models. The idea of connecting the usage of war toys with actual war machines was a compelling one, but the project struggled to get off the ground for years, both due to shifts at studios that showed interest in the project and also confusion about what the film was supposed to be. By the 90s, he was able to get the film made at Fox, and it ended up becoming both a critical and financial failure. It has mostly left the cultural sphere and is basically forgotten and hard to find these days. The only real staying power it has is reference in that one Simpsons episode about the bizarre tease,r which was just Robin Williams standing in a field and talking about the movie. While Levinson has made successful films, it feels like he never reached the heights of Rain Man again after the failure of this project.
The poster for Toys has always caught my eye. A bizarre piece that has Robin Williams wearing a red suit and a red bowler hat, with the same image placed in a repeated pattern on his hat resembling the famous painting The Son of Man. Frankly, a film like this sticks out in Levinson’s filmography, which mostly consists of legal and historical dramas. Even so, I tend to be compelled by films like this simply because a bizarre film made by an individual voice tends to be far more interesting to experience than most types of movies. Having finally watched it recently, I can say that while I liked the film and found a lot of it engaging, I am not surprised that it was not well-received and did poorly. The idea that is the most engaging in the film is Levinson’s conceit of using the wordplay of war toys literally. The film is about Leslie Zevo, who is the son of the owner of a surreal and bizarre toy factory. After his father’s death, his uncle Leland, who is a military general, is put in to manage the factory and gets interested in the possibility of toys and video games that could be used in combat. This results in a struggle between the two over the future of the factory and the morality of using said toys in combat. Unintentionally, this conflict can be read as a metaphor about drone warfare far ahead of its time. Leland has many scenes describing the potential of this type of combat that fit the description of modern warfare technology perfectly, with his plan to use kids’ fixation on and efficiency with violent video games to pilot smaller crafts for combat. As such, it’s an engaging metaphor that speaks to how militarization can seep into even the most innocent elements of mass culture.
Alongside the commentary, the performances and look of the film are really good as well. Williams is as charming as he always is and has great chemistry with Robin Wright, who is his love interest in the film. One of the best scenes in the movie is them striking up a conversation at the mess hall and being so engrossed with each other that they don’t even touch their food and stay there until dusk. It’s an odd but touching little moment. Joan Cusack also shows up as Leslie’s sister and is even more quirky and odd than he is. Michael Gambon portrays Leland and gives a funny and also imposing performance, both in his apathy for the factory and glee in his efforts to turn it into a war machine. LL Cool J is here as well as Leland’s son, and is surprisingly pretty good. The gag of his being so prepared for military affairs that he constantly sneaks into scenes unnoticed and in disguise is one of the best in the film. Overall, a stacked cast that does a great job giving life to these odd characters.
As for the look of the film, the art direction and visual style are also interesting. It’s clear that Levinson wanted the look of the film be inspired by surrealist art, and it really shines both in the costume design and art direction. From the entrance of the main office in the factory having a literal rolling staircase, to the bizarre assembly line that creates the toys, to the fact that the factory is located in this isolated and sprawling field. It is intentionally made to look like a modern art painting, and it is a real looker. The costume work is also really good, with a mixture of surreal and stylized designs. Some of my favorites include the military uniforms Leland has his soldiers wear, the kaleidoscope-looking general fit he wears as he gets more involved with the factory, and Cusack wearing life-sized doll costumes and plastic headpieces since she likes to test them out. Even the score and musical usage are interesting in how odd they are. Hans Zimmer, in one of his earlier movies before he became a huge name, has a more subtle and electronic score to complement the surreal imagery and tone. The score is also accompanied by some songs that aren’t pop at all and are more offbeat and experimental, outside of using an instrumental version of Welcome to the Pleasuredome.
Unfortunately, while a lot about this film is interesting and does work, it is a case of too many ideas and not enough focus. While Leslie is endearing as a lead, the film doesn’t really give him a dimensional character aside from his basic motivations. The chemistry between him and Robin Wright is adorable, but their relationship doesn’t really feel like it has anything to do with the story or the development of the conflict. The same can be said for the contrast between the two ideologies. While I wanted Leslie to triumph in his conflict, the film doesn’t really lay out a proper ideology to contrast with Leland’s, and it feels like it develops into a simple good vs evil conflict despite the intent being more layered on Levinson’s part. Leland even ends up becoming so delusional and aggressive that he tanks his chances at presenting his work to Washington, so the end conflict feels more isolated to the future of the factory rather than the potential future of militarized toys.
It also feels awkward at times in an effort to be odd for the sake of it. Some of the jokes don’t really land, and some sequences come across as too bizarre for their own good or just come and go. A plot-pivotal scene can be followed by a brief and completely unrelated tangent that doesn’t really add anything. The best example is a scene where Leslie and his sister set up a fake music video sequence to distract security guards watching the cameras. While it’s a fun sequence, it also feels a bit out of place and overlong, especially with the MTV plug (probably only there because Fox owns the channel). There’s a scene in the climax that could be interesting, where Leslie and his compatriots send out old toys to combat the militarized ones, but it results in a bizarre sequence of the old toys being constantly blown up in a melancholic, drawn-out manner. It could be read as the old standing up against the new, but it is hard to see that reading since the toys get absolutely destroyed, and it’s mostly used as a distraction for Leslie to get to Leland. The most egregious is a twist involving Cusack that literally comes in the last few minutes of the film. It is completely undercooked and downright bizarre. I feel it would have actually meant something if it had been either properly set up or revealed earlier in a more meaningful way. The movie, while a collection of interesting ideas and fun elements, feels like it isn’t cohesive. By the end, while I felt positive about the experience, I couldn’t help but also feel that it didn’t really know what to do with itself by the end, even with themes that did feel more fleshed out earlier in the film which felt undercooked by the end.
In general, Toys is a strange film that I both enjoyed, but completely understood why it has the reputation it has. It’s a film that is unbridled by commercial ideas and the trends of the day, and that’s both a boon and a detriment to the efforts on screen. I vibed with so many of the odd choices and sequences, but also felt that it didn’t really create a cohesive whole. I feel that I enjoyed it more as a broad experience than as an overall film, and that my more oddball tastes meant its eccentricities would help minimize the faults in my eyes. Even so, it’s a movie that fascinates me both in how it came to be and in its overall execution. It was a film made simply out of a passionate drive from a director who finally got the clout and stability to make his dream project, but he never seemed to figure out all the details, so most of his ideas are just thrown onto the screen regardless of whether they work out. Even while filming, many didn’t fully understand what Barry was trying to make. Sort of like how the Star Wars prequels were a case of Lucas having complete autonomy on every idea, regardless of viability. In this day and age, I feel that we should be somewhat appreciative of these types of films. In a Hollywood that feels far more constrained than ever, the films that feel more individual need to at least be acknowledged for their strengths and have faults that are still stronger and more realized than a lot of films made today. I guess Toys was a reminder for me to see the positives in a mixed experience and that even a messy film can have a lot of merit to it. I would much rather have something like it than a film that didn’t try as hard, faults and all.
