Zach Galifianakis plays the creator of Ty Inc. and the Beanie Babies in this drama about the ’90s stuffed toy sensation.
Remember the Beanie Babies craze in the ’90s? Well, The Beanie Bubble looks into how the stuffed animals became such a phenomenon.
The movie, directed by Kristin Gore and Damian Kulash, tells the story of Ty Inc. and the rise and fall of the Beanie Babies around the birth of the Internet.
Although Ty Warner (Zach Galifianakis) leads the company, the story is told through the eyes of three women who quietly helped the brand become a billion-dollar business. Their names have been changed for the film but they are based on real people.
There is Maya (Geraldine Viswanathan), who joins as a receptionist and works her way up and eventually runs the company’s website, believed to be the world’s first business-to-consumer website. There’s also Robbie (Elizabeth Banks), Ty Inc.’s co-founder and Ty’s on-off partner, and Sheila (Sarah Snook), his fiancée.
The film opens with the disclaimer: “There are parts of the truth you just can’t make up. The rest, we did.” While it is based on Zac Bissonnette’s book, The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute, it takes liberties with the truth and should not be viewed as a documentary. The true story has been heavily dramatised for comedic purposes.
The storytelling is pretty standard for this kind of film and the script could have done with some more laughs, even though it’s more of a comedy-drama than a straight comedy.
However, the different perspectives help keep it interesting and it was smart to focus on the unsung women instead of the eccentric billionaire.
Each woman is given her own chapter and the film switches back and forth between their stories and their time within the company or with Ty. Due to this narrative device, it can often be difficult to keep track of the chronological order of the bigger picture and because it focuses on three people and covers a lot of time, it is spread quite thin and the characters aren’t given a ton of depth.
The standout storyline is Maya because most people will be able to empathise with her struggle to be recognised and appreciated for her work. However, Banks, Snook and Viswanathan are all excellent at portraying women shafted by the power-hungry businessman.
Presumably, Ty has been exaggerated for comedic reasons, as Galifianakis perfectly plays him like a larger-than-life horrible boss who is vain, controlling and sneaky.
The Beanie Bubble tells a fairly generic story but the performances make it worth a watch.
On Apple TV+ from Friday 28th July.
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