Playmobil: The Movie

Using media to promote a product has changed its approach in our modern age of cinema. In the 2000s and beyond, there have been different adaptations of toy lines made to focus on long properties like the Michael Bay Transformers. The king among them, however, is The Lego Movie for proving not only that show how much fun their product can be for their customers but also provide a heartwarming story abundant of humorous writing, gorgeous animation, and likable characters. Its success, however, would pave way for other studios to attempt a copy/paste of other toy lines for monetary benefit. This brings us to Playmobil: The Movie, a French computer animated family movie meant to promote the titular toy line. There are little to no marketing for it but I noticed one trailer while watching Frozen 2, which looks more phoned in than a Disney direct to video feature. There was something fishy about this situation where film studio STX had such low confidence that they request theaters to charge all showings at $5. I entered the auditorium to see what kind of quality it has to warrant such an action and left it baffled by its abysmal lackluster state.

How does this exist? Honestly the history of this creation is much more interesting than the product we ended up receiving on the big screen. The initial pitch for this movie was intended to be a trilogy with Bob Persichetti as director/writer, was originally set to be released in late 2017, and was presented to Sony to see if they would budge into a deal. That fell through but Sony would later offer that filmmaker the director role for Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse. They replaced Bob with Lino DiSalvo, who worked 17 years at Walt Disney Animation Studios.

What's it about? This story follows a girl looking for her brother after they have been magically transported into the Playmobil world. The writing for this is the most boring and generic it could possibly get to where these inexperienced writers think that because it's a family feature they don't need to try. Their rushed writing about a happy sibling bond into a broken one in the live action intro (including a song...yes seriously...) doesn't do the story any favors when they are taken into animated form. Rather than make anything at all interesting or unique, every scene is bland and uninspired with characters stating (or singing) they learned something instead of rather showing it. By the end of the experience, frustration from its wasted opportunity in its pursuit to be a blatant empty copy of The Lego Movie sinks this hard.

How are the actors? The actors to focus on here are Anya Taylor-Joy and Gabriel Batemen. Their respective acting suffers from both the lackluster directing and terrible script. This is a shame for the main actress in particular because for someone who does a lot of smaller independent movies, this is definitely outside of her type of work and it makes her look like she's lacking in talent. Gabriel is mishandled with the voice direction as he sounds more annoying whenever his parts pop up. A dishonorable mention goes to Daniel Radcliffe primarily for being advertised as a lead role when he's really a minor one with a lame running gag.

Overall Consensus: Playmobil The Movie is a soulless animated feature with generic storytelling, bland characters, lackluster world building, and is a forgettable experience. ⭑ Runtime: 1 hour 34 minutes PG

Reasons to watch it:  You are a fan of the aforementioned actors. You are curious about its quality after reading this review.

Reasons to avoid it: You aren't a fan of the aforementioned actors. You dislike blatant rip-offs of great classics that are devoid humor, passion, and effort to make itself memorable.