Jack Brown (Richard Pryor) is an unemployed journalist who finds himself ‘bought’ by Louisiana millionaire U.S. Bates (Jackie Gleason) to be his spoiled son Eric’s (Scott Schwartz) human toy, all of them learning lessons about life, humanity, friendship and family as an unintended consequence of this bizarre arrangement.

CRITIQUE

Richard Donner’s The Toy is not a good movie. In fact, it is easily the worst thing the director of Superman, The Goonies and Lethal Weapon ever helmed, which is kind of saying something considering the guy also has made Timeline, Radio Flyer and Assassins. But the guy is a talented filmmaker, there is no disguising that fact, and for him to have made something so epically terrible as this remake of the 1976 French film helmed by the great Francis Veber is in some small way a tiny bit shocking.

But the simple truth is that Carol Sobieski’s (Annie) script has no idea what to do with itself, no concept of how to make any of what’s going on connect or how to fashion flawed three-dimensional characters worthy of caring about. On top of that, it’s like she’s written two completely different movies for Pryor and Gleason to star in, neither of them looking remotely comfortable doing what is required of them the latter looking so particularly bored you can tell he’d rather be anywhere than on this particular set.

Pryor does try his best, and there are some out of left field moments where his (almost certainly improvised) verbal gymnastics couldn’t help but get me to loudly laugh. But he has no chemistry with his costar (and future porn star) Schwartz, even less with Gleason, and no matter how hard he tries he just can’t make anything worthwhile out of the material.

I will say this, The Toy reminds me of the majority of Adam Sandler’s recent output, and you can make of that statement what you will. The comedy walks a line between sentiment and gross-out silliness that’s remarkably similar to say Grown Ups or Jack and Jill. It wants to be over the top and absurd but at the same time pull at the heartstrings and make the viewer cry. It wants to have its cake and to eat it, too, going for extremes but at the same time longing to be a universal tale of growth and redemption everyone everywhere can relate to.

None of that should be construed as anything close to a compliment. The Toy is a bad, sometimes borderline offensive, oftentimes forgettable comedy that never knows what it is or what it is trying to say. There’s a reason Donner never talks about it, and for the life of me I can’t imagine why Image Entertainment and Sony Pictures felt the need to give it a Blu-ray upgrade. If there are fans of the film out there I’ve never met them, and I seriously doubt now that it’s available in hi-def it’s going to find any new ones anytime soon.

THE VIDEO

The Toy is presented on a single-layer 25GB Blu-ray MPEG-4 AVC Video with a 1.85:1/1080p transfer.

THE AUDIO

The Toy comes to Blu-ray in English DTS-HD Master Audio Mono and includes optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles.

THE EXTRAS

There are no extras included with this release.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Despite all the talents of many of those involved, The Toy is a rather mediocre movie with very little to recommend about it. Pryor tries his best, and there are a couple of laughs I admittedly didn’t see coming, but overall this film is a mess I can’t imagine anyone enjoying.