{"id":9880,"date":"2024-12-10T23:32:57","date_gmt":"2024-12-11T04:32:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=9880"},"modified":"2024-12-10T23:32:57","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T04:32:57","slug":"the-toy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/12\/10\/the-toy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Toy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Toy <\/strong>(1982)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia Pictures\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 102 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, comic violence, brief nudity, sexual humor and conversation)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Richard Donner\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Carol Sobieski and Francis Veber\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Patrick Williams\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Laszlo Kovacs\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 10, 1982 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Richard Pryor, Jackie Gleason, Scott Schwartz, Ned Beatty, Teresa Ganzel, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Annazette Chase, Tony King, Don Hood, Karen Leslie-Lyttle, Virginia Capers.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $47.1M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0 File The Toy<\/strong> under Wouldn\u2019t Get Made Today. In these overly-PC times, it\u2019s a folder that grows larger by the day. I get it though. Even though it\u2019s a remake of a popular French comedy (1976\u2019s Le Jouet<\/em>), there\u2019s no way any studio would touch a movie about a spoiled white kid buying a black man to act as his toy today. At the time of its release in pre-PC 1982, some raised objections over the movie\u2019s premise calling it offensive and tantamount to slavery. Admittedly, it does sound distasteful when you put it like that.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I don\u2019t think Richard Donner (Superman) was out to offend anybody when he decided to make The Toy<\/strong>. When adapting the comedy for American audiences, Donner wanted to hire the best man for the title role. He wanted somebody that would put butts in the seats. Enter Richard Pryor, an actor-comedian with serious box office clout. He had a gift for physical humor, slapstick and exaggerated panicky reactions to different situations. Back in the day, he had great success with hit movies like Silver Streak and Stir Crazy. In addition, he showed a softer side in the previous year\u2019s Bustin\u2019 Loose in which he drives a busload of special needs children cross-country. It turns out he worked well with children. Who knew? It was a strategic bit of casting that worked. He cast comedy legend Jackie Gleason (The Honeymooners) as the kid\u2019s father. There\u2019s a reason he was affectionately known as \u201cThe Great One\u201d. He\u2019s GREAT!<\/p>\n

\u00a0In The Toy<\/strong>, Pryor plays Jack Brown, an unemployed journalist in danger of losing his home if he doesn\u2019t come up with a lot of money quick. Swallowing his dignity, he takes a part-time job as a \u201ccleaning lady\u201d at a department store owned by millionaire businessman U.S. Bates (Gleason). Blame it on the desperate times\/desperate measures mentality of the early 80s. Bates\u2019 bratty 9YO son Eric (Schwartz, A Christmas Story) arrives home from military school for his yearly week-long visit with his aloof dad who tells the boy he can have anything in the store he wants. After seeing Jack goof around on a \u201cWonder Wheel\u201d, he brusquely informs his father\u2019s right-hand man Morehouse (Beatty, Superman) that\u2019s what he wants. Not the Wonder Wheel, the black man clowning around on it. What\u2019s more, this is a kid that doesn\u2019t know the meaning of the word \u201cno\u201d. In short order, Jack is sent to Bates\u2019 mansion in a box and bow.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Needless to say, U.S. is flabbergasted over his son\u2019s choice of a new \u201ctoy\u201d. In a subplot sure to fly over the heads of younger viewers, he\u2019s in some sort of legal trouble that necessitates the brining together of a prominent politician and the head of the KKK. The last thing he needs is his son getting all buddy-buddy with a black man. Now about Eric. He gives new meaning to the term \u201cbrat\u201d. He acts out a lot. He plays all manner of annoying pranks on Jack like throwing firecrackers at him and dumping goop on his head. However, I wouldn\u2019t say he\u2019s necessarily a bad kid, just a lonely one trying to get his distant father\u2019s attention. As for choosing Jack as his toy, what he really wants is a friend to make him laugh. He just doesn’t know how to go about making friends. For his part, Jack is determined to teach the boy what being a friend really means. Over the course of the week (for which he\u2019s being paid 10 grand), he\u2019ll also try to teach U.S. how to connect with his son on a meaningful level.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Yes, I\u2019m well aware The Toy<\/strong>\u00a0is childish and sappy as hell, but I still find it funny. It\u2019s not as epic-hilarious as it should be with headliners Pryor and Gleason, but it has enough laughs that you won\u2019t mind investing 102 minutes of your life in it.\u00a0It has a good supporting cast that includes Teresa Ganzel (My Favorite Year) as Bates\u2019 dizzy third wife Fancy whose two best assets are conveniently always on display in a series of low-cut necklines. Wilfrid Hyde-White (My Fair Lady) uses his dry British wit to great effect as the always-tipsy butler. Karen Leslie-Lyttle is a riot as the consummate German nanny with a thing for Jack. She keeps trying to get him in the tub.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Toy<\/strong>\u00a0is billed as family entertainment, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s an accurate label. While it\u2019s rated PG, it\u2019s pre-1984 PG. As you all know, that\u2019s the year the MPAA established the PG-13 rating for movies that were too much for a PG but not bad enough for an R.\u00a0The Toy<\/strong>\u00a0contains a great deal of bad language, jokes about huge breasts and sexual references. There\u2019s a scene were Eric looks at a fully nude portrait of Fancy in his father\u2019s office. One running gag has his father\u2019s employees and household staff referring to Eric as \u201cMaster Bates\u201d; another has Fancy pronouncing her husband\u2019s name as \u201cU Ass\u201d. This is clearly not a movie for the under-13 set, yet I don\u2019t see where it would appeal to anybody much older than that. It\u2019s a kid\u2019s movie with adult material.\u00a0In that sense, it\u2019s a little bit like the R-rated Bustin\u2019 Loose which would be an ideal family film if not for Pryor\u2019s frequent use of profanity including the dreaded f-word. He doesn\u2019t use it in\u00a0The Toy<\/strong>, but there\u2019s still enough for parents to object to.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Enough about that, what about the rest of it? Pryor and Gleason have some nice moments together. The chemistry is definitely there. Schwartz\u2019s character is kind of annoying at first, but he grows on you. He\u2019s one of the better child actors to emerge from the early 80s with subsequent roles in classics like A Christmas Story and Kidco. Okay, maybe it\u2019s not exactly a classic, but HBO sure showed it a lot. The aforementioned subplot involving the KKK is a strange thing to put in a supposed kid\u2019s movie, but at least Pryor gets the last laugh on the racists.<\/p>\n

\u00a0For all its shortcomings,\u00a0The Toy<\/strong>\u00a0is pretty good because it\u2019s funny, the most important function of a comedy. I still crack up when Pryor finds himself up to his neck in a lake full of piranhas. It also has a message about what it means to be a friend and care about somebody. I think many adults can benefit from that lesson. Some need it more than the kids.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Toy (1982)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia Pictures\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 102 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, comic violence, brief nudity, sexual humor and conversation)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Richard Donner\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Carol Sobieski and Francis Veber\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Patrick Williams\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Laszlo Kovacs\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 10, 1982 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Richard Pryor, Jackie Gleason, Scott Schwartz, Ned Beatty, Teresa Ganzel, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Annazette Chase, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10191,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/The-Toy-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9880"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10193,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9880\/revisions\/10193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}