The Beanie Bubble

This is a hell of a story. Great costume design and cinematography. Good acting. Nicely developed characters. Colors play a huge role and are on point. The way the story told is really annoying. While I don't mind the jumping back and forth through the years as long as I know when we're at, there were a few occasions they didn't put the year on and that caused a little timeline confusion. It's a story about a downfall of a vain man-child who couldn't grow up. It's also a story about investing in the dumbest of things. It's a solid 4 star piece that I'll gladly watch again only for the beautiful colors and the great makeup on Zack Galifianakis' face.

Another production clearly seeking to capitalize on nostalgia for a particular time, appealing to a large & wealthy demographic. None of this is inherently a problem or complaint.

The execution belies a tight production schedule to just get this movie out there. Acting, writing and directing are all just slightly better than 'going through the motions' or checking the box. The young sales person/ assistant/ college intern is the most egregious: like a cartoon, no sense of pacing, no sense that characters listen to each other. The acting is painfully obvious as ACTING - saying the lines, showing the assigned emotion, etc.

It's likely that some - not all - of the cast could be better, but no one asked them to be, here.

Maybe the story could be interesting enough.... It's hard to say, from watching this. Unfortunately, it seems that all the competition among streaming providers is lowering the bar for quality, and driving production more for for quantity. So, viewer costs go up because production costs for content are the same for poor quality as it is for better quality.

The film starts out telling the audience that they made up a lot of the script. That should be a clue.

As a movie, it's really well done and enjoyable. The acting is excellent, the costuming is fantastic, and the script moves it along very quickly. It's occasionally hard to follow, but this doesn't take away from the overall enjoyment. Elizabeth Banks is superb as the clever, crafty Robbie.

The story is told from three women's points of view - pretty much how they were wronged and deserved the credit for the Beanie Babies craze. If you recognize the "woman scorned" POV from the beginning, it's a lot more enjoyable as just a movie. It's certainly NOT a documentary -- if you want to see a more accurate depiction, watch Beanie Mania (2021). But if you just want an enjoyable flick, this is it.

When thinking about this review and the movie, I kept getting drawn back to how flamboyant the characters were and then it struck me. I was watching characters apparently 'borrowed' from The Righteous Gemstones. I know it was the 80's but it was a little cartoonish.

The characters are also presented in such a way that shows most of them in a pretty poor light. Except for the Maya character who was presented in the film as the great underbelly of the company.

Has some entertaining moments and is often interesting but lacks any depth perhaps as its presented more as a comedy than a drama or bio film :)

The Beanie Bubble is a movie about, well, the Beanie Bubble. It tells the story about their creator and the women who actually were behind everything. It does have multiple POVs and a lot of time jomps, but, once you get used to that, the movie unfolds nicely and its enjoyable to watch. The best part of it was, though, the colors! Bright and vibrant, they did give the movie a nice spin on the old and stuffy historical drama, and they made the movie fun to watch. The performances were also great by everyone in the cast, and the main leads did an excellent job with their characters. Though the story is okay on paper, those two factors did make the difference.