The Beanie Baby craze hit at just the wrong time, or possibly the right time, for me to get on board. I was in college when it first started, and by the time it was at its zenith, my kids were still too young to care about the dolls and I was too broke to afford to “invest” in them. Given how it all turned out, I’m not terribly disappointed I missed it, but there is something thrilling about being in the middle of a big trend like that. Directors Kristin Gore and Damian Kulash take a look at the craze in their new movie, “The Beanie Bubble,” currently streaming on Apple TV+.
The story follows the rise and fall of toymaker Ty Warner (Zach Galifinakis) and the three women who were by his side through the whole thing: Robbie (Elizabeth Banks), Maya (Geraldine Viswanathan), and Sheila (Sarah Snook). We see Ty’s start, creating under-stuffed animals to make them more posable and cuddly, and then the move to the scaled down Beanie Babies. It tracks the way creating scarcity drove up demand and how the rise of the internet at the same time helped. And it shows the way that ego and disregard for those around him led to the eventual collapse of the market.
As biopics go, this is an interesting one. The film plays with time a lot, jumping between the three relationships and the way the company grew. There weren’t a lot of visual markers that showed where we were in the timeline, so that can get a little bit confusing, but overall, it was fairly effective. Certainly it allowed us to see how Ty not only damaged his company, but also the relationships he cultivated along the way.
The performances are all good, but Galifinakis really shines in this. He brings his larger than life personality to this truly odd story and character and it is just wonderful. He rides the line between funny and ridiculous perfectly and it’s worth watching the movie for his performance alone.
I think my biggest frustration with this movie is that it purports to be about the women who inspired and built up Warner’s empire, but changed the names of all of them. I understand that in biopics, characters are often composites of several real people, but these women are not composites, they were just not quite authentic enough to use their real names. It feels like it takes something away from the real women who actually made the company to use characters that are more story-friendly.
All that said, this is an entertaining film and a fun way to spend a couple hours. But like the toys that it’s named after, “The Beanie Bubble” is just a little understuffed to make it more posable and it has some dubious long-term value.
ALISE CHAFFINS is a Morgantown writer who reviews a movie from a streaming service every Saturday and one newly in theaters every Sunday. Find more at MacGuffin or Meaning on Substack.
