Toys

Toys is a modern fairy tale in which the director has really given free rein to his imagination. The film is set in a stylised world where a toy factory is the centre of events. When the owner and managing director Kenneth Zevo is at death's door, he asks his brother the General to take over the company after his death. He doesn't dare leave it to his grown-up but immature and childish children, Alsatia and Leslie. The General, however, has no intention of running the factory in the same naive and happy spirit. In secret he begins to develop war toys, which Alsatia and Leslie only discover too late. It turns into something close to a family feud, not to mention a battlefield, when Zevo sends his military toys out on a killing mission. For behind the toys lie real weapons. Alsatia and Leslie, though, have their imagination to fight with, and moreover the General's son Patrick has switched to their side.

The strength of Toys is its colourful and handsome scenery and its relatively dynamic plot. Among the film's weaknesses is that it feels a touch too strained and overwrought. Perhaps it is too banal to tell a traditional fairy tale for adults - and too difficult if you want to preserve the innocence, as Toys desperately tries to. Furthermore, the film seems a little too moralising and naive in its own outlook on life. So Toys may well be entertaining, but next time I would rather see Robin Williams a little more down to earth.