Barry Levinson, taking surrealism and in particular the clouds and derby hats of Magritte as his passkey to the realm of the cutesy-wootsy and the silly-willy (talk about cultural decay!), attempts to become Tim Burton and at the same time remain the same warm-hearted, soft-headed liberal he has always been. That eternal child, Robin Williams, is not "ready" to take over the family business, so when his toymaking father passes on (tombstone inscription: "May joy and innocence prevail"), Zevo Toys falls into the hands of the founder's brother, a three-star general in the U.S. Army (Michael Gambon, with a feebly explained British accent) who plans to convert the operation to the manufacture of miniature munitions ("My God! F.A.O. Schwarzkopf!"), provoking a climactic battle between the new war toys and the phased-out benign ones: little wind-up duckies and froggies getting their heads blown off. The overall sensation, with special credit or blame to the miniature-golf-course production design of Ferdinando Scarfiotti, is a bit like reading Dr. Seuss while eating a double-fudge, double-whipped-cream, quadruple-maraschino-cherry banana split while riding a carnival Tilt-a-Whirl. Urp. (1992) — Duncan Shepherd
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