Babes in Toyland

When I was quite young, I had a book. (Well, truth be told, I had more than one book, but this tale is just about one of those books.) I don't remember the title of this book, nor do I remember most of the contents of this book. I do remember that I liked this book. I assume it had pictures as well as words. It might have been a collection of Disney Stories. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck both have some sort of harmonic convergence with my memories of the book, but that may just be Projection. There is just one thing related to this book about which I have an actual vivid memory. At the end of the book, there was the story of Babes in Toyland. That story had pictures from the movie Babes in Toyland. The pictures were neat. There were real people and toy soldiers. I do not know whether I ever read the story accompanying those pictures, but I do remember the pictures. [Now, I can't form a mental pictures of the images from the book--I seem to completely lack the ability to form mental pictures--I discovered a few years back that this is an oddity--I really cannot close my eyes and bring a sharp picture to mind. But, my mental deficiencies are not the subject of this post--so, I'll save that for another day.]

Because of this book, I really wanted to see the movie Babes in Toyland. But, I grew up in the pre-VCR days. So, I never saw it. When VCRs became all the rage, one went to these video stores to rent VCR tapes. I never found the movie at one of them. When Netflix entered my life, I looked for the movie. It was not out on DVD.

Until now.

Last night, I sat down with Clara (and truth be told, Lily--but Lily left after 10 minutes--Lily almost never watches movies--I think she lacks the attention span to watch a 2 hour movie--she would rather be on Facebook (sigh)) to watch Babes in Toyland.

I had no idea what to expect from the movie. It turns out it is a standard Disney movie--think Bedknobs and Broomsticks or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I have always had a soft spot for that genre of Disney movies--they are charming in a sort of desultory way and the randomness and cuteness of it all amuses me a bit. The big take away moral of the movie? I don't know...toys are good? The way to a woman's heart is not killing off her fiance and stealing her sheep? You can return from the Forest of No Return? Vital lessons to be sure, but even still.

Clara's evaluation of the movie: "It was weird." She didn't like it too much. That fact interested me. I suspect with two changes she would have loved it: 1) The main characters were of the type "Beautiful People in 1960." So change 1 is: Switch that to "Beautiful People of 2009"--get Zach Efron and Selena Gomez as the leads. (Similar changes would have to be made with the other characters.) 2) The special effects were state of the art Disney Special Effects of 1960. So change 2 is: make that LucasArts special effects of 2009. Keep everything else the same, and I'll bet Clara loves the movie.

In the end, I would highly recommend the movie to anyone who had that same book I had when I was a kid and has also been wanting to see this movie for over three decades.