Movie Review

The Beanie Bubble stuffs kooky comedy, '90s nostalgia, and hilarious hype of Beanie Babies madness

The year in movies in 2023 has been a fascinating collision of art and commerce. It has contained more films than any other in recent memory about the rise (or rise and fall) of a particular business/product, including Air, Tetris, BlackBerry, and Flamin’ Hot. And that’s not even counting the big movie based on a video game and the other big movie based on a doll.

The latest to jump on that train is The Beanie Bubble, which chronicles how the strange ‘90s obsession with Beanie Babies stuffed toys came to be. The story revolves around Ty Warner (Zach Galifianakis), the founder/owner of Ty, Inc. (side note: Who knew that the name of the company was just the founder’s first name?), but the filmmakers are more interested in three women who played big parts in his life.

Photo courtesy of Apple TV+

Elizabeth Banks and Zach Galifianakis in The Beanie Bubble.

Robbie (Elizabeth Banks) is a friend/love interest of Ty who is instrumental in launching the company in the 1980s. Maya (Geraldine Viswanathan) joins the fledgling company and helps with innovations like creating a company website (a rare thing in the early 1990s) and encouraging resale of the toys on Ebay. Sheila (Sarah Snook) becomes his love interest after he and Robbie part ways, with her and her daughters providing inspiration for some of the first Beanie Babies.

The story, told by co-directors Kristin Gore and Damian Kulash and co-writers Gore and Zac Bissonnette, is one of a man who proclaims to value the input of all of these women, but who lashes out in variety of distasteful or unethical ways when their power threatens his. The fact that each was at least partially responsible for turning the company into a billion-dollar venture makes his decision-making easier to comprehend, since greed is a time-tested fault for people even stronger than Ty.

The filmmakers do an effective job of alternating between the three women’s arcs, and even colliding them at various points. Ty’s enthusiasm for the company’s products is what draws them all in, and it’s not until each has become fully invested that they understand his unwillingness to share the spotlight and the vindictiveness that comes with that reluctance.

If the above makes the film sound super-serious, it’s far from it. The film is light on its feet because of the way it explores how something so frivolous became so coveted. An opening scene showing a trailer truck crashing and spilling thousands of Beanie Babies on a highway sets the tone, and the filmmakers never stray too far from that. Ty toys are, naturally, omnipresent, and just the sight of them – as well as some flamboyant wardrobe choices and other elements – lightens the mood even when a scene itself is darker.

Galifianakis is impressive in a role that allows him to go to places he’s rarely touched as a straight-up comic actor. The type of acting he does here makes the character much more than just a punchline. All three main women are great, with Banks and Viswanathan both bringing depth to their individual roles. Viswanathan is especially good at making Maya almost relentlessly positive without ever being annoying.

The boom and bust of Beanie Babies as a legitimate investment is told with panache in The Beanie Bubble, aided by a quartet of performances that sell the characters well. Your stash of Beanies may not be worth much anymore, but at least you can enjoy a movie that’s far from under-stuffed.

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The Beanie Bubble opens in select theaters and starts streaming on Apple TV+ on July 28.

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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess