I recall the time when I took some tests to be assessed for my IQ, intelligence, and/or learning disabilities a few years back. The expert who assessed me found the results quite curious, and noted the following: “a Full Scale IQ Score is not an accurate assessment of his ability. He is a student whose scores on these measures of ability range from the 5th to the 99.9th percentile. A Full Scale IQ Score represents an average of these numbers and as such, will underestimate his strengths and overestimate his weaknesses.” The same can be said of many people and many things, as nothing is black and white. This is why I argue that the classic Walt Disney embarrassment Babes in Toyland, based on the fatally frown-inducing operetta of the same name, cannot be given an accurate star rating.
Babes in Toyland is such a remarkable piece of work, which I suppose is best understood in context. As I understand it, Disney planned to make a Wizard of Oz movie ever since the days when he was working on Snow White, but ironically, the success of Snow White prompted MGM to buy the rights to The Wizard of Oz in an attempt to make a better family film than Disney’s. (Spoiler alert – they succeeded.) Years later, Disney decided to try again to get the rights to make an Oz film, but he wanted to do a test-drive first to see if his creative team – and his usual cast – could pull off such a feat. His test was Babes in Toyland, which was an old operetta made by the people who’d created a successful Wizard of Oz operetta, and Babes was just a cash-in on that. So, Disney’s Babes in Toyland is a Wizard of Oz test drive based on a Wizard of Oz rip off, which happens to star Ray Bolger of Wizard of Oz fame. Some of my facts might be a little off, so feel free to correct me since I’m no historian, but this is about the gist of it.
Because I love MGM’s Wizard of Oz, I naturally really like many elements of this film. The overall spirit, mood, and atmosphere are just delightful. It’s just as wondrous and theatrical as I would want any live-action family fantasy film to be. Many, many, many of the visuals are fantastic because the lighting is so perfect, and the costumes so colorful. The cast is clearly talented too, and they use every exaggerated prop or over-the-top costume piece to its fullest potential to create an atmosphere of complete other-worldliness. Because of this, just watching clips from the movie would make it seem like perfection, at least for someone with my tastes in film.
Here comes the however. However . . . the problems with this beast seem unending. The puppets are often hideous and/or poorly performed, the plot doesn’t make any sense, the characters are all idiots, the focus of the story keeps changing, the songs are mediocre, and nearly every scene goes on far too long. That sums up a lot of it, but a closer look will reveal other issues. It seems to be rather sexist, mildly racist, and possibly advocating child slavery. It’s not that Disney can be blamed for all of these problems – I can say from experience that the stage show is just as painful if it’s not performed with astonishing excellence from all cast members – but what people forgive on a stage they’d decry on a screen.
Unfortunately, while it’s a film worth studying as visual art, and although it may make for a good laugh if you riff it with an MST3K-loving friend, this cinematic disaster is far from being the kind of holiday classic one would hope Mr. Disney would have produced.
