When you think of director Richard Donner, you might first think of the “Lethal Weapon” franchise or, maybe, “Superman” or even “The Omen” (click here for my review) from the horror genre. You can even go back to TV’s “The Wild Wild West” in 1966 for his directing work. However, his most underrated effort has to be “The Toy” with entertainment legends Richard Pryor and Jackie Gleason. Both actors do a great job (at least briefly at times in “The Toy”) but the pure moments each has with the other makes this critical bomb much better in places than you’d believe. Besides, it has the great Jackie Gleason and that’s a treat and quite a blast from the past (if you don’t remember he was in “Smokey and the Bandit” – click here for my review but best-remembered for TV’s “The Honeymooners”).
‘The Toy’
(1982; 102 minutes; rated PG; directed by Richard Donner and starring Richard Pryor, Jackie Gleason and Ned Beatty)
THE BEST OF ‘THE TOY’ IS ONLY A FEW MINUTES, BUT IT’S GREAT
(NOTE: I expanded this review with additional opinion and trivia and the updating of links on April 18, 2020.)
I’ve written before about how a movie can have parts that, taken separately, are good, but when you put them together it just doesn’t measure up. I’ll say that for “The Toy,” too, because it has some truly excellent interpersonal scenes between the characters, but is dragged down pretty far for the majority of the film. The actors’ work is worthy of critical accolades at way too few times and Hollywood stereotyping and lack of quantity of quality make it an overall loser.
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In re-watching the film recently, I was taken aback by just how good Richard Pryor, Jackie Gleason and Scott Schwartz, who plays Gleason’s son and the child who’s in Pryor’s charge here, can act. I’m sorry to report that they can simply not manage to maintain that level with any consistency in this film – otherwise this would have been an instant classic while in reality “The Toy” was correctly panned by the critics. Still, it was a hit at the box office but at times today (more than three decades later) is an embarrassment in a cultural sense.
The great scenes are few and far between, but the chemistry between the actors truly showcase’s each’s strength and this one nearly elevates itself to the “must-see” level.
For example, when Schwartz, who plays “Eric Bates,” acts like the bratty, petulant kid he’s playing here, it is a Hollywood writer’s view of how a bratty kid behaves. The boy obviously was overplaying the role and the screenwriter doesn’t know how real children behave.
However, when Schwartz’s character gets real, say when having a serious talk with Pryor, who plays “Jack Brown,” about becoming a man, both actors’ work rises above “good” and you’ll be surprised at the depth of emotion they can bring to the big screen.
Gleason, who plays millionaire “U.S. Bates,” switches on an off from a somewhat stereotypical rich jerk or cruel businessman to an actual father who is concerned about and wants to connect with his son. It’s unfortunate that Gleason couldn’t bring the same emotion to more parts in “The Toy,” but with the thin material he had to work with it becomes surprising he’s able to do as much as he does with the truly emotional parts. Plus, he is so smooth here that the ease of his work disguises his talent.
It’s too bad that there are too many scenes setting up the emotional moments that make this film. At the beginning of “The Toy” the boy goes to dad’s store and told he can buy anything (of course he winds up “buying” Pryor) and it takes too much time so that Pryor and fool around while wearing headphones. Still, there are gems, too, such as when Pryor and Schwartz are running around and burst into the German nanny’s room and hilarity ensues.
I’ve already given you the basis of the “The Toy” but I’ll quickly outline it: Pryor is an aspiring journalist who cannot get a job at Gleason’s newspaper so he winds up as a “cleaning lady” in a Gleason-owned store. The boy, who’s visiting home from military school, wants to “buy” him because he needs a friend and Pryor looks like fun. Cue the slave references (and Pryor’s wife in the film is part of “Klan Watch” and is an activist attorney against segregation and deceptive corporations) but also the underlying theme of how people will sometimes do anything for money.
Of course (and you never had any doubt about this development), Schwartz and Pryor bond; they form their own newspaper; expose some of Gleason’s nasty sides; and the whole thing brings all three closer together as well as solve issues intermingled in each of their separate lives.
Here’s a quick rundown of some of the principal cast:
- A Primetime Emmy winner and three-time nominee, Pryor does many things very well in “The Toy.” He is tremendously funny as well as supremely watchable and does good physical comedy – but not so well with some of the slapstick he has to work with here. When Pryor is most genuine is when he’s talking one-on-one either with Gleason and Schwartz. It’s too bad he didn’t have a better script to work with. Pryor was in “Silver Streak” with Gene Wilder (click here for my review) and did an even better job in “Harlem Nights” with Eddie Murphy (click here for my review). Pryor won for writing on 1973’s variety show “Lily” featuring comedy legend Lily Tomlin (one nomination came from another variety show in which she starred). Pryor died at 65 in 2005 of a heart attack.
- An Oscar nominee and three-time Golden Globe nominee, Gleason easily spins through this one and you can tell at times that he was just cashing a check. However, his talent as an entertainer flashes through consistently in “The Toy” but, like Pryor, is best one-on-one. His casual disdain while ordering minions about is done well and doesn’t come off as contrived (as it all too easily could have been). “The Toy” isn’t a top-of-resume effort for Gleason, who is best remembered for TV’s “The Honeymooners” and was nominated for an Oscar and a Globe for “The Hustler” with Paul Newman. I’ll always think of Jackie most fondly for “Smokey and the Bandit.” Gleason died at 71 in 1987 in his beloved Fort Lauderdale of complications from colon and liver cancer.
- Schwartz does a very underrated job as the kid actor here. He fails only when the script lets him down – that is frequently since the adult writer stereotypes the bratty kid like so many Hollywood efforts before and after. Still, it isn’t a bad all-around effort. Schwartz is best remembered as “Flick” in the holiday classic “A Christmas Story” (click here for my review) and he also put forth a good effort in “Kidco.” After a bunch of adult film “acting” credits from 1988 until early in the new millennium, Schwartz is back with mainstream efforts for just longer than five years.
- An Oscar nominee, Ned Beatty plays “Sydney Moorehouse” and is an executive in Gleason’s business empire. Beatty does more consistently solid work here than any other actor and he best handles a scene being denigrated by Gleason with aplomb – more on this later in the review. I liked Beatty in his tiny part in the spy thriller “The Fourth Protocol” (click here for my review) and he was nominated for “Network.” Beatty will always be remembered for “Deliverance” with Burt Reynolds.
- A Golden Globe nominee (not for this one), Wilfrid Hyde-White plays the butler “Barkley” and his is the best character in the supporting cast. “Barkley” leavens everything for Gleason, even though the pair have a checkered past between them. Hyde-White does the great butler act a year after John Gielgud’s “Hobson” in “Arthur.” Hyde-White doesn’t hold a candle to Gielgud here, but does a smooth and effective turn. He was in “My Fair Lady” and “Let’s Make Love” with Marilyn Monroe and was nominated for the TV series “The Associates.” Hyde-White died at 87 in 1991 of congestive heart failure.
The film’s plot includes Pryor and Schwartz disrupting a lawn party that includes an undercurrent of the Ku Klux Klan and being part of an escapade where Schwartz ruins a formal dinner party.
However, there is one serious dramatic moment that kind of gets lost in the overall deficiencies of the film. It is when Gleason proves his power by demanding that Beatty take off his trousers in front of Pryor and Schwarz. He threatens to fire him if he doesn’t obey – he needs to prove how money is power and Gleason has the power to make a man take off his pants against his will because of the job. Beatty does it and it’s a pitiful moment in his life and an underappreciated moment in this film.
Overall, there’s some things you’ll like with this one and I believe the most disappointing thing about “The Toy” is that it hasn’t held up at all – and at worst is more than a little culturally insensitive. Its best scenes are still great and I truly enjoyed re-watching them, but the film is hopelessly outdated and often makes you shake your head with those negative stereotypes. It’s too bad with the talent here that I have to write that impression.
“The Toy” was the 14th ranked film at theaters in 1982 with $47.1 million, according to Box Office Mojo. The No. 1 film was “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” with $359.1 million and at No. 2 was “Tootsie” with $177.2 million. Films from the same year that I’ve reviewed are:
- “Grease 2” (very poor sequel) – click here for my review
- “Porky’s” (gold-standard teen comedy) – click here for my review
- “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” (great sci-fi) – click here for my review
- “TAG: The Assassination Game” (not terrible) – click here for my review
Assorted cast and film notes (via IMDb.com):
- “The Toy” is actually a remake of a French film from six years earlier than this movie’s premiere date. The French film is titled “Le Joulet,” which translates to … naturally … “The Toy.”
- Nearly half the film was shot at a mansion named Charbonnet House near Baton Rouge, La.
- Schwartz was 11 playing the role of 9-year-old “Eric.”
- I guess Schwartz didn’t listen to Pryor’s good advice about men and women in the film, since com notes that the boy would go on to a career in adult films.
- Directly from IMDb.com: “In his E! True Hollywood Story bio, Scott Schwartz says that the hardest part of making this movie was working with Jackie Gleason. Because Schwartz was trained to memorize his lines, he would always get thrown off by Gleason’s improvisations, resulting in his getting yelled at repeatedly by Gleason.”
- Click here for IMDb.com’s page of trivia about the film …
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