The Beanie Bubble, 2023.
Directed by Kristin Gore and Damian Kulash.
Starring Zach Galifianakis, Elizabeth Banks, Sarah Snook, Geraldine Viswanathan, Tracey Bonner, Carl Clemons-Hopkins, Hari Dhillon, Ajay Friese, Sweta Keswani, Jason Burkey, Madison Johnson, Kurt Yaeger, Delaney Quinn, and Callie Johnson.
SYNOPSIS:
Ty Warner was a frustrated toy salesman until his collaboration with three women grew his idea into the biggest toy craze in history.
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, The Beanie Bubble wouldn’t exist.
Anyone that got caught up in the Beanie Babies fad (small stuffed animals) might have remembered the name “Ty” inscribed in red on a paper tag attached to the toys. That name is in reference to company CEO Ty Warner, who one would logically assume was the brains behind their meteoric rise in value to obsessive collectors, but, as played by an unrecognizable Zach Galifianakis (a more serious-minded riff on his pathetic manchild routine, additionally saddled with mommy issues) in The Beanie Bubble, he was a bitter idiot that ignored rock-solid advice from competent women employees around him, while also taking credit from the women in his personal life regarding the best ideas.
Directors Kristin Gore and Damian Kulash (working from a screenplay by the former and based on Zac Bissonnette’s book The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute) approach this material from two separate points in time on a collision course with one another, also paralleling each other. In 1983, Ty takes a friendship with Elizabeth Banks’ Robbie, a frustrated woman seeking to shake up her life while facing a complicated relationship with a wheelchair-bound ill man who mostly sits around and mopes rather than continuing to charge at life strong, to the next level by starting a toy business selling stuffed animals.
The complications in Robbie’s relationship are mostly glossed over and feel deserving of a bit more screen time, but it is easy enough to see how she would become sucked into Ty’s sob stories about his abusive father and abandonment issues from his mother, and his unbridled ambition to not only follow in his father’s footsteps but start something bigger and much more successful. However, even this relationship also feels underdeveloped and shortchanged, containing a montage of them breaking up and getting back together multiple times. We understand the toxicity on a basic level, but nothing deep. There’s a routine and familiarity to the relationship forms here, without any real interest in fully diving into those aforementioned mommy issues.
Then there is a concurrent storyline set in 1993 that sees Ty Warner rebranding, coming up with the Beanie Babies concept from the daughters of a new partner, Sarah Snook’s Sheila, a woman who vowed not to start dating again but gets pulled into his orbit anyway. The kids suggest the stuffed toys be smaller and softer, while also suggesting several designs and ideas for names. While watching The Beanie Bubble, one wonders if Ty Warner had a single original idea contributing to the eventual craze.
Ty certainly wasn’t responsible for generating interest or understanding how that happened. That honor belongs to Geraldine Viswanathan’s Maya, who took on a desk job for extra cash in the corporate headquarters when she was 17, putting her resourceful, data-crunching, technologically progressive mind to use, exploring the strongest marketing tactics. It’s a bright and winning performance, as Maya takes the early boring days of the Internet and spins it to their advantage, creating a fun webpage for collectors to keep track of the toys they do have. The eBay craze also comes into play, which turns out to be something Ty was too dumb to understand how it would benefit them. There’s also a naivety in Maya that this is her American dream and that her hard work will lead to a high-paying position in life, with no need to follow her parents’ wishes of becoming a doctor. Geraldine Viswanathan’s spirited performance is infectious, working in tandem with the craze for these toys.
Aside from inevitably finding out how the two timelines are pieced together, the bulk of The Beanie Bubble focuses on Ty and his immaturity, personal and professional failings, cluelessness, and his attempts to start his love life over. While the performances across the board are reliably strong, the material is never as compelling or entertaining as when the story focuses on the toys themselves and what insane headlines they are making next.
The Beanie Bubble tells a solid story about the incompetent man in charge of the company and the lovers he screwed over, But there’s also a feeling of dead air whenever focus is taken away from Maya’s personal investment and revolutionary intelligence in turning these toys into one of the hottest commodities the world has ever seen.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
