tHis Easter, a new film based on a Sylvanian family, will be released in cinemas. If you've been catching up with a movie based on toys for the past decade or so, you're allowed to hear this news and feel horrible. Since Barbie took $1 billion and was nominated for the Oscar bundle, toy movies have not been allowed to become toy movies anymore. It must be an autured toy movie. It also serves as an explanatory commentary on the capitalist plot that drives the toy industry.
It's everywhere. In 2022, Emily v. Gordon and John M. Chew announced they were making Playdo films about “the purpose of creativity, imagination and art.” JJ Abrams makes a film based on Hot Wheels, which he describes as “emotional, grounded and rough.” A24 makes a dinosaur film for Bernie, which is said to have been heavily influenced by Charlie Kaufman's work. All of these are real things that are happening.
And with all this in mind, your stomach probably has been hit by the prospect of something similar happening to your Sylvanian family. After all, few are as pure as the Sylvanian family. For beginners, these are small toys made of plastic with herds. Each toy is a different forest creature dressed in conservative clothes in Prim. They are dain, timeless and easy to love. When the UK's only dedicated Sylvanian family shop closed in 2023, it felt like it was nothing more than an innocent death.
The last thing we all needed was a film about Sylvanian families, which provided viewers with the Sylvanian family brand methacrytic. There's no edgy joke about the lack of genitals. There is no social commentary that class wars, looming environmental disasters, or the rise of right-wing populism, have shaken the toys out of their pristine comfort. The only thing everyone really wants in a Sylvanian family movie is the many scenes of Sylvanian families acting like Sylvanian families.
Readers, they understood the assignment. “Will Freia find a lovely birthday present for her mummy?” In the recently released trailer, she asks, “And will she succeed in choosing this year's tree?” And that's all. That's the entire film. Little girls need to buy birthday presents for their mothers and judge the tree competition appropriately. Please read it again. Do you feel good?
Certainly, there are moments in the Sylvanian family trailer where we flirt with the kind of subversion we've grown before. In one scene, a young rabbit tries to lower the hammer into the claw she holds in the other hand. In other toy movies, she can spend money on shattering her fingers. It's not here. There is also a sequence in which the characters play the saxophone. This is an instrument that brings the dangerous implications of jazz and sex. Still, she plays it, and it sounds good, and nothing bad happens.
In fact, aside from the relatively large noise that plays in 28 seconds, the trailer is just as peaceful and attractive as the toy itself. In fact, it seems that the entire film was made by people, like children, who were very faithful to the source material, and sometimes, by people who were hand-moving Sylvanian family toys. Honestly, given everything that's going on in the world, the trailer feels like a warm 70-second bath to your brain.
Again, it's probably easy to exaggerate the impact of Auter Toy movies in a wider market. Honest Sylvanian family-style films are still there, not usually theatrical releases.
Netflix, for example, has released new non-Gerwig Barbie films at one or two speeds each year since the beginning of the decade. In fact, we have had Barbie since Barbie was released. Skipper and Big Babysitter Adventure (Barbie's sister makes her company a success), Barbie and Stacey are rescued (Barbie and her friends make new friends at the hot balloon festival) and Barbie and Teresa: Friendship Recipes Likewise, Netflix has an array of my little pony shows and movies, but none of them are trying to do anything but talk about my little pony. The same can be said for Thomas The Tank Engine.
None of these have made $1 billion. You don't need to be a financial expert to assume that Sylvanian family films aren't either. But that's not the point. The point is that Freia needs to find a nice birthday present for her mummy. Really, isn't that enough?
