Family /Musical
1961 / 105 minutes
Rating: 7/10
Babes in Toyland stars all your children’s nursery rhyme favorites. There’s Little Jack Horner, Simple Simon and the pieman, Jack and Jill, Little Bo Peep and her sheep, and of course, Mother Goose herself. That might make this the perfect way to introduce your little ones to the musical genre. Our story begins with preparations for a wedding. Tom (as in, “Tom, Tom, the Piper’s son“) and Mary (quite contrary) are going to get married and the whole village is so excited they just have to dance and sing!
There has to be a villain, of course, and the black-hatted, black-caped, black-elevator-shoe-clad Barnaby Barnacle is such an over-the-top meanie that only the youngest of children might be scared by him. He knows something Mary doesn’t – that when Mary is married, she’s going to inherit a large sum, so Barnaby wants to marry Mary, instead of Tom! To that end, he hires two henchmen – the very large Gonzorgo, and the entirely silent Roderigo – to, first, kidnap Tom and throw him into the sea, and then steal Mary’s sheep so that, impoverished and alone, she’ll be forced to marry Barnaby. Crooks that they are, the two henchmen instead sell Tom to the gypsies so as to get paid twice. And that sets the scene for Tom’s eventual return.
But there are still sheep to recover, and that leads to an almost “second chapter” for the film where Tom and Mary head into the ominous “Forest of No Return” to search for the sheep. There they find “the Toyman” who is a Santa-like figure, making toys for girls and boys. Further hijinks ensue, with Barnaby still trying to marry Mary, but this time using all sorts of toys and gadgets from the Toyman’s workshop to try to put an end to Tom. When he gets his hands on a shrinking ray he thinks he can finally cut Tom down to size. It turns out, though, that even pipsqueak Tom, with the help of a toy army, is more than a match for Barnaby!
Cautions
Not much to note here: the talking trees in the Forest of No Return were the only truly scary characters for my sensitive 7-year-old, and it helped to assure her that they turn out to be not so bad after all. Also, Tom briefly plays the part of a gypsy fortune-teller, and that might have been problematic if it wasn’t all just a prank on Barnaby.
Conclusion
The acting is over-the-top and the characters are all from nursery rhymes so the target audience is clearly children. But there’s so much color and energy and action that older kids and parents will enjoy it too.
