THE BEANIE BUBBLE Review: Comic Elegy for Stuffed Animals and the Women Who Made Them

In the 90s, everyone went a little mad.

The Beanie Bubble
The film is now playing in select U.S. theaters and will begin streaming globally Friday, July 28, on Apple TV+.

Declaring that it will not be telling the story of the man who claimed complete credit for the Beanie Baby madness that gripped the world in the mid-90s, The Beanie Bubble instead relates the experiences of three women whose creative ideas and business/marketing acumen were actually responsible.

Lurching backwards and forwards from 1983 to 1993 and then back again, before moving forward into the mid-90s, the film seeks to redress the impression that Ty Warner (Zach Galifianakis) was entirely responsible for small stuffed animals that became a phenomenon. Adapted by Kristin Gore (Futurama) from the non-fiction book The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute by Zac Bissonnette, first published in 2015, the film is the directorial debut of Kristin Gore and Damian Kulash.

Its approach, scattershot as it is, still makes a strong case that Robbie (Elizabeth Banks), Sheila (Sarah Snook) and May (Geraldine Viswanathan) were charmed by Ty's effusive personality. At different points in time, Robbie and Sheila were both romantically charmed to the point of marrying Ty. May was charmed by the strength of his personality to the point of creating brilliant marketing strategies for him that were worth far more than her paltry salary as an office worker.

The net effect can be compared to watching three simultaneous, non-fatal automobile accidents in slow motion. Or having a dream that seems impossibly loopy; surely, someone will wake up and stop the madness.

It took a while, in large part because of the discriminatory business practices of the day, which favored white men as though they were the only ones who could possibly be responsible for any great success stories. The women must fight hard in order to overturn the entrenched patriarchy, not only in the toy business, but also in American society at large in the 1990s.

Elizabeth Banks, Sarah Snook, and Geraldine Viswanathan have all demonstrated the strength of their characters in the past, so the game is rigged in the sense that we know that they must be able to gain the credit, and enjoy the success, that their characters here so richly deserve. They are all equal to the task of showing that work is involved; not just brilliant work, but work they must do while 'dancing backwards and in high heels,' to borrow a phrase from Ginger Rogers.

Frankly, I lived through the 90s without ever buying, or knowing anyone who bought, a Beanie Baby, so sympathies to anyone who endured that madness for the sake of their children. For the rest of us, The Beanie Bubble functions as a reasonably entertaining historical document that the 90s were just as crazy as every other decade, especially when it came to stuffed animals.