"Plush Bubble" with Zach Galifianakis - a movie after which only zilch remains
Miscellaneous / / July 29, 2023
Lots of toys, little fun.
Bubble Plush premiered on Apple TV+ on July 28. And he hardly deserves attention.
The film is based on the book The Great Beanie Baby Bubble by Zach Bissonnette. This is the story of Ty Warner, a businessman who made billions selling plush toys. In many ways, the success of his company was due to the development of the Internet and online auctions - plush animals quickly became desirable for resellers and collectors.
The film was directed by people who have never been directors of feature films: Christine Gore (who produced Foxcatcher) and Damian Kulash. Gore also wrote the screenplay and Kulash wrote the music. The cast looks much more impressive: Zach Galifianakis (“The Baskets”), Sarah Snook (“The Heirs”), Elizabeth Banks (“The Hunger Games”) and Geraldine Viswanathan (“The Miracle Workers”).
Bubble Plush tries to tell the rise and fall of the company from multiple angles. The main characters are founders Ty and Robbie, Ty's wife Sheila, and employee Maya.
Lack of a unified history and confusion
The film has a very strange structure. Imagine that ten people are simultaneously telling you about their childhood and breakfast in the morning - something like “Bubble Plush” looks like.
The action takes place in several timelines, and the story is told from four different characters. Transitions from one part to another are as chaotic as possible. Just got Robbie from 1992, they show Ty from 1983, and then Maya from 1997. As a result, each story turns into a set of scraps and is never told to the very end.
Several times while watching, there is a feeling that the film is starting to accelerate - a nerve, a conflict appears in it. But then there is another change in the time period and the hero, so that emotions subside. By the third act, "Plush Bubble" corny fizzles out and no longer even tries to evoke emotions.
It seems that a simple linear narrative would not greatly improve the film, but at least add emotion and some kind of plot to it. As it stands, it's a strange story where something insignificant always happens.
deceitful sincerity
Nostalgia for the times in which he did not live is a fairly popular emotion in modern cinema. The first season of Stranger Things is based on it, and the recent Tetris bribed it.
"Plush Bubble" tries its best to inspire the viewer with this nostalgia, but does it with the pressure of a consultant in a hardware store - after the third phrase, you want to run away.
Sometimes a show tries so hard to be heartfelt that it becomes cloying. Filling the screen with toys, the authors seem to forget that they are leading the plot to debunk the personality of their creator. It seems that the classic transition from the light side of the personality to the dark one suggests itself, but it also breaks off. As a result, all these bright colors, antics of Galifianakis and mountains of toys do not lead to anything.
America and capitalism
The phrase “American dream” is very often heard in the film (by the way, modern screenwriters use it only in films about the past, which is funny). And the main character serves as the embodiment of the American dream. But throughout the film, there is never an explanation of whether it really exists and, if so, to what it leads. The main character is too empty to illustrate anything.
At some point, it seems that the film is about to begin to expose capitalism - after all, toys were sewn in China and Korea, and the boss of the company paid the employees a penny. But this narrative also ends in mid-sentence.
Plush Bubble is a failed attempt to tell too much, and also with the desire to show different points of view. As a result, the history of the toy manufacturer turns into a labyrinth where none of the paths leads anywhere. It is better to spend two hours on something more interesting.
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