Them Scaaaaary Eighties Movies

There are certain types of people who annoy me more than others. One of those types are the "Old Rock n' Roll is better" kin. Whenever old animated movies are brought up in a conversation, you can bet there's one guy who will jump in and say "Eighties movies were so dark and edgy, so much better than new animated films". I hate this sentiment. In fact, I despise it when people focus on a film or a game's darkness like it's some never-fail element of quality. But how often is a film's darkness a positive trait? Darkness is frequently abused. In the case of the Brave Little Toaster, it's use of darkness if frequently debated.

The movie starts off with a chilling atmosphere. Long shots with no music- it's effective. Unfortunately this is a kid's movie, so what the hell are you doing setting up the movie like a horror flick? Oh, that's right. This is an eighties film and filmmakers thought kids were into Little Richie and getting the crap scared out of them.

Within the first ten minutes or so of the movie, we are introduced to our characters, a heating blanket goes on an acid trip when he hears a car approaching, and the air conditioner has an aneurysm and dies. All of this intermixed with pessimism and melancholy. Things turn around when the titular Toaster bands everyone together to head out and find their neglectful Master in the city.

There's not a lot of time to breath in this movie. The movie has a very fearsome atmosphere throughout. It's unforgettable and being so freakin' scary, but it's dark. There's the infamous nightmare sequence with a creepy-ass clown chasing Toaster with a hose- hoping to water down the Toaster and causing the hero to short circuit and die. Following that, the heroes wake up to find Blanky drifting away on nighttime storm wind. Aaaand then Lampy- the desk lamp- purposely gets struck by lightning.

Lots of other fun things happen, like Kirby- the vacuum cleaner- having a seizure and choking on his cord (tongue), drowning in quicksand, and being brought to an appliance shack to be gutted for parts. One of my favourite scenes in this movie is when the gang comes across a pond. Toaster, annoyed by all the frogs staring into her(?) mirror-y surface, walks off into a meadow. She meets a flower- an almost sentient flower- but gets uncomfortable with the flower's advances. Running off and hiding, she spies on the saddened flower as it withers dead- it had died of rejection. Yeah.

The ending at the junkyard is the part people seem to like the most. The heroes get dumped into a junkyard and are chased by a demonic magnetic crane that just wants to seem them on the conveyor belt and crushed into tiny block of scrap. A nice little musical number starts- "Worthless"- and a dozen cars sing their farewells before they are crushed dead. Oh, and one drives into the crusher as a suicide reference.

The film's climatic scene is Toaster sacrificing herself by plummeting into some gears and jamming them up to stop the crusher from squashing her master. I guess suicidal thoughts are contagious. Don't worry, though. The film has a happy ending that feels almost too happy and sunny for such a dark story.

This brings up my point. How dark is too dark for a kid's movie? Now, this movie is one of the darkest kid's films I've ever seen. However, it feels like it hasn't gone too far, so it gets a passing grade. And it used its darkness well. The bright and sunny parts of the film really resonate with the viewer because the rest of the film is so macabre. The ending feels truly earned for the heroes- like a real victory. You can't say the same with all dark kid's films.

Since the nineties and the rise of Pixar and Dreamworks, kids films have gotten a lot more... pop. There's better jokes in the scripts- kids movies nowadays are just a lot more aware of adult viewers, or so it seems. Some movies take this too far (like Shrek 3) but that's another rant for another time.