The Brave Little Toaster (1987)
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The Brave Little Toaster Movie Review
The Brave Little Toaster is a 1987 animated fantasy musical film directed by Jerry Rees. It is such a wonderful, underrated movie.
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“We’re trapped here like rats!
Small little rats with no hair and one leg“
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A group of dated appliances embark on a journey to the city to find their master after being abandoned in a cabin in the woods. I don’t understand why this film isn’t better regarded nowadays. It is one of the most underappreciated movies from the eighties that actually predated ‘Toy Story’ by eight year. It has a very similar plot, which makes me think less of that Pixar movie now.
The film works on multiple levels. It benefits from its independent roots, but also Pixar and Disney elements too. As for the Disney elements, it is a musical and the songs are mostly quite good. I liked all four musical numbers, but City of Light is clearly the highlight. It is wonderfully sung and very moving and fun. It signaled the beginning of their wonderful adventure outside.
The Pixar elements include the high-concept idea and a lot of emotion put into its storytelling. The premise was very well executed and the movie is actually quite sophisticated in its tackling of different people and how nobody can ever understand what another person is going through or what makes them unique. That was all so interesting and the movie’s highly moving at times.
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But the movie was still a rare independent animated feature made in the eighties and it shows as some sequences are simply immensely dark and mature. You would not have seen any of that stuff in the Disney movies of that decade, save for ‘The Black Cauldron’ of course. But the hints at depression and even suicide made the movie surprisingly adult.
It does have an uneven tone for sure. It tries to be both dramatic and comedic, succeeding more in the former than the latter for me personally. The directing is fine and the voice acting is lovely, but the sound quality wasn’t the greatest and it was muffled at times. But the score was terrific.
As for the animation in The Brave Little Toaster, it is nothing to write home about. This is where the movie showed its age and its budget as it looked quite cheap in comparison to the big-budgeted Disney flicks. The character designs worked for me as they were both cute and very well imagined, but the overall background work and colors felt both muted and unpolished.
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I loved the characters. The protagonist was so endearing and likable. Blanky is so great and the two have a wonderful dynamic. Radio is the funniest, Lampy is the dumbest and Kirby is the oldest and the crankiest. The cast is colorful and unique with all personalities being quite different, making for a more interesting, complex dynamic that really worked.
