Apple TV+, 2023. Comedy. 110 min.
Grade: 3 out of 4
The Beanie Bubble, the new comedy that charts the improbable rise and inevitable fall of the Beanie Baby craze of the 1990’s, is, on its face, the story of the plush doll that inspired toy store fistfights and investors to sink their life savings on cat-sized mounds of fluff. But really, it’s a distinctly American story of guts, genius, delusion, and well-earned comeuppance. Because the craze itself was so ridiculous, and only in hindsight and with this film in hand can we come to grips with the depths of our collective insanity, co-directors Kristin Gore and her husband Damian Kulash, Jr., present their story not as a straight cautionary tale, but as a bubble gum-colored dream come to corporate, capitalist life. If it ultimately condemns its Odysseus-like main character, Beanie Baby inventor Ty Warner (played as a flamboyantly brilliant, self-destructive man-child by a never-better Zack Galifianakis), co-writers Gore and Zac Bissonnette make sure Ty invokes his “only in America” ethos enough times to convince us that this story could only happen in a country that venerates innovation and tends to look the other way at the ego and hubris that often accompany it. It’s a stylistic gambit that works and makes The Beanie Bubble a SMH look how one clueless, prideful man created an unlikely phenomenon on the backs of others.
Based on Bissonnette’s 2015 book The Great Beanie Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute, the film paints a fascinating portrait of Warner, a slippery character who will evoke feelings of admiration, pathos, and hatred in the viewer but Galifianakis’ gale force performance keeps us from dismissing the character and movie outright. It also helps that all aspects of Warner’s behavior are seen through the eyes of the three women who’ll help him launch his empire but who’ll eventually be emotionally or financially betrayed by him. Elizabeth Banks (who is having a well-earned moment as an actress and a director) has always projected serious brains and as the story opens in 1983—years before the first Beanie Baby would soil store shelves—she plays Ty’s neighbor, Robbie. Unhappy in her career and her marriage, Robbie takes a curious liking to Ty and becomes his drinking buddy, lover, and most importantly, his business partner. These early goings establish the craftiness of The Beanie Bubble, specifically our recognition that even though Ty is not what he seems, we can still admit that he is, in a narrow but quantifiable way (considering the success of his future creation), a genius.
His and Robbie’s business initially consists of selling toy Himalayan cats that are understuffed with filling making them more posable. The inspiration for the product that would make him unfathomably wealthy involves the second woman who’ll be charmed by Ty only to fall victim to his narcissism. Sheila (Sarah Snook) is a single mother of two daughters (Madison Johnson and Delaney Quinn, both adorable). Ty’s powers of persuasion are so acute that one moment he’s three hours later for their first appointment, the next he’s hanging out with Sheila and her daughters who give him the inspiration for Beanie Babies after asking for smaller plush toys that’ll fit in their backpacks.
The Beanie Bubble comes on the heels of other recent films that act as origin stories for products. Films like Tetris, Air, Flamin’ Hot, Barbie, and BlackBerry represent a disturbing trend. The old-fashioned Hollywood movie star—save Tom Cruise—is dead, having been replaced by superhero characters. Now the star is not Captain America, but a product, with audiences paying money for a two-hour commercial for Barbie dolls that goes down easy because it’s “meta,” whatever that means. The Beanie Bubble skirts much of the uncomfortableness of this trend by casting a subtextual side-eye at how these businesses are run and a very-noticeable glower at how corporate leaders (almost always men) enrich themselves beyond measure while the rank-and-file struggle to make ends meet. This idea comes home in the person of Maya Kumar (an eager, wide-eyed, and terrific Geraldine Viswanathan), a 17-year-old who ditches med school to work as a minimum wage receptionist at Ty’s company, Ty, Inc. Her contribution was to realize the power of that new thing called the internet and that even-weirder website called eBay where collectors are reselling Beanies for thousands because Ty smartly limited supply to create artificial scarcity. That Ty can’t see the value in either the internet or eBay (in fact, he chafes at not getting a cut of each eBay sale) shows the limits of his vision. He also doesn’t see the value in other people, even those who are making him rich. A lover of plastic surgery, chocolate milk, and himself, Ty can be as charming (his marriage proposal dance to the tune “Oh Sheila” would melt anyone’s heart) as he can be cruel (he acknowledges Maya’s gargantuan contribution to the company’s success by offering to raise her salary from $12 an hour to $20 an hour).
Gore and Kulash, Jr. lard their tale with stylistic affectations that mask the film’s predictable trajectory but become dangerously distracting, like the constant hopping forward and backward in time, from the ‘80s to the ‘90s. While this does allow them to create intriguing parallels and editor Jane Rizzo to keep the momentum peppy, it threatens to become too much. And the insistent narration and pop song-filled soundtrack goose the energy in ways that are too artificial in a film already built upon a certain artificiality.
No matter how much liberty the filmmakers took in creating Robbie, Sheila, and Maya (reports are that Maya is a composite character) the fact is that, in this movie, Ty is ungrateful when he’s not being oblivious and his treatment of the women behind his success broadens out the story in contemporary and resonant ways. And the pastel palette utilized by cinematographer Steven Meizler successfully argues that underneath all those positive pinks and bright blues hides an ugly corporate monster. Indeed, the film has much to say about corporate greed and the opportunistic and narcissistic geniuses who wallow in it. As played by Galifianakis, Ty seems to genuinely enjoy making kids happy. But he also has no problem selling out those responsible for his wealth and success. He is like a magnet; he can attract you despite yourself. But flip it around and he can repel you with equal force. He is, in Gore and Kulash Jr.’s expert reading, an all-too-typical American entrepreneur, where the seeds of success and failure are planted at the same time.