The Beanie Bubble – A Generic Corporate Biopic

This year has seen studios abandoning more common biopics centered around famous individuals and shifting more focus to biopics based on companies, brands, and famous products that most people have known about all their lives or have at least heard about at some point. This year has already featured such films as Air, Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game, Tetris, Blackberry and Flamin’ Hot, with The Beanie Bubble now being the latest to join the list. The Beanie Bubble focuses on The Beanie Babies craze of the 90’s and centers around CEO Ty Warner (Galifianakis) or more importantly, the three women who grew his idea into the biggest toy craze in history and all the betrayals, backstabs and manipulation he caused along the way. The film may be far from the best in this recent trend of corporate biopics especially in the same year as the aforementioned Air and Blackberry, but it is still an entertaining and enjoyable one that’s enlivened by the terrific cast.

This corporate biopic trend is already starting to get old especially when there’s been 6 films released in the past 4 months, but thankfully they’ve all been at least decent even if they’re structured fairly similarly to each other. The Beanie Bubble might just be the most conventional and generic thus far, and while it never quite reaches the greatness it strives for or that the cast is putting in, there’s a lot to like about it and it does move by at a fairly quick pace. As someone whose heard of Beanie Babies (if you grew up in the 90’s or 2000’s it was kind of impossible not to) and owned quite a few but didn’t know the behind-the-scenes details on the product, company and people who brought it to life, this is a pretty fascinating story that keeps the viewer engaged throughout. Many may be unaware of the shady dealings and backstabbing that took place over the course of the invention and distribution of such a popular children’s toy, but the film shows all of it in a mostly compelling way.

The story is told in a non-linear fashion through the perspective of each of it’s three female leads. The structure is a very interesting and understandable choice and works very well in the end because of the parallels between the different timelines. Without this cast, this probably would’ve been just okay or mediocre at best but thankfully all four leads make this immensely more enjoyable and watchable than it would be without them. The film boasts one of Galifianakis’ finest performances to date and it’s so great seeing him in a mostly serious role like this. The comedic and sometimes charming side of the character really plays to his strengths but he’s even better when gets to show his slimy and corrupt side. Banks’ Robbie is probably given the least screentime out of the four leads, but her character and storyline was a personal favorite and her scenes with Galifianakis are some of the film’s best. Snook is great as ever as Sheila while Viswanathan continues to prove she’s one of the most promising and underrated actresses working in Hollywood as Maya.

There aren’t really any major or unforgiveable flaws with The Beanie Bubble but it never quite wows and despite not knowing the story beforehand, it’s a pretty routine and familiar rise and fall story where audiences can see pretty much every dramatic beat coming from a mile away. It opens with a text that implies/states some of this story was made up for dramatic purposes and it does take away from the experience a bit if something happens that isn’t fully believable or if one puts too much thought into it similar to Flamin’ Hot. If a film has to make up or fabricate details based on things that actually happened, then what’s the point of bringing that story to the screen in this way?

Overall, The Beanie Bubble is a perfectly enjoyable, funny, and competently made biopic that will play better if one is familiar with Beanie Babies or the behind the scenes story. It’s not something one needs to rush to see or anything like that but for anyone into these types of stories and biopics, then this film is definitely worth a watch.

still courtesy of Apple

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Connor Carey

www.connorsmoviereviews.com/