Movie review: Zach Galifianakis shines in engaging toy story 'The Beanie Bubble'

Zach Galifianakis stars in "The Beanie Bubble."

Elizabeth Banks, left, and Zach Galifianakis in "The Beanie Bubble."

Zach Galifianakis stars in “The Beanie Bubble.”

If only because it is the feature debut of co-directors Kristin Gore and Damian Kulash Jr. (lead singer of the band OK Go), it's surprising how consistently engaging and entertaining "The Beanie Bubble" proves to be.

Already given a limited theatrical release, the comedy-drama built around the wild Beanie Baby craze of the 1990s from Imagine Entertainment debuts this week on Apple TV+.

Penned by Gore ("Saturday Night Live," "Futurama"), it is based loosely on Zac Bissonnette's book "The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute," with significant liberties taken for narrative purposes.

"There are parts of the truth you just can't make up," reads text that greets the viewer in the film's opening seconds. "The rest, we did."

Of all the fine choices made by Gore and Kulash — high school sweethearts who've been married since 2016 — none is finer than the casting of North Wilkesboro native Zach Galifianakis as Ty Warren, the toy salesman largely responsible for creating the little understuffed animals that would become speculative investments for many.

According to the movie's production notes, the couple saw the film as a vehicle for the hilarious "Hangover" star even before developing it. However, Galifianakis' Ty is nothing like some over-the-top characters the actor has played in that 2009 hit and other movie and TV projects; he is complex — at times funny and charming and at others greedy and duplicitous and still at others weak and immature.

This portrait of the eventual billionaire is told over two timelines — one beginning in 1983 and another starting 10 years later — and primarily from the points of view of three women. Although based partially on women from Warren's past, Elizabeth Banks' Robbie Jones, Sarah Snook's Sheila Harper and Geraldine Viswanathan's Maya Kumar have been invented for "The Beanie Bubble."

Ty first befriends Robbie, who's frustrated with both her job and marriage, and convinces her to start a business with him. The son of a toy salesman, Ty wants them to sell stuffed Himalayan cats — his innovation being that they stuff them only so much, causing them to feel softer and making them easy to pose.

Eventually, as success comes, a romance blossoms.

In the later timeline, Ty Inc. is doing well, and the company hires college student Maya as a receptionist.

Meanwhile, Ty is hours late for an appointment at his house with Sheila, a lighting designer. When she reads him the riot act, he is immediately smitten and puts the full-court press to convince the mother of two young girls to go out with him.

Ty really takes to the girls, and he values their opinions on his products. In fact, the idea for Beanie Babies comes when one is disappointed one of his stuffed animals is too large to fit in her backpack, making it impractical for show and tell at school.

"Before we knew it," Sheila says in narration, "we were a family — a funny, weird, happy family."

Ty never enters into a romantic relationship with Maya, but she becomes indispensable to him at the company — or so it would seem, at least. Among her ideas are creating scarcity to make certain Beanie Babies objects of incredible desire and to create a company website at a time most businesses had yet to do so.

As the popularity of Beanie Babies grows and grows, Maya closely monitors trends, using eBay and other new online resources, and she grasps what is happening with the craze and where it's all heading far better than Ty. (That he detests Beanie collectors — because they're making money off his creations, not appreciating that they're fueling his overall business — is both hilarious and, in its way, tragic.)

"The Beanie Bubble" keeps you invested as it runs along its parallel tracks, even as they draw closer to their inevitable conclusions. Perhaps it's all a little predictable, but that's understandable given what we remember about the time when Beanie Babies were all the rage — and then weren't.

In the hands of Galifianakis ("Due Date," "Between Two Ferns"), Ty is a compelling figure even when we are meant to loathe him. The strange businessman radiates a unique energy that powers "The Beanie Bubble."

That said, Banks ("The Hunger Games," "Love & Mercy"), Snook ("Succession," "Predestination") and Viswanathan ("Blockers," "The Broken Hearts Gallery") each brings qualities to her character that help make the firm work. You root for all three of them but especially Maya — increasingly underappreciated by Ty — thanks largely to the earnestness Viswanathan infuses in her.

"The Beanie Bubble" feels oddly relevant in the time of cryptocurrencies and NFT, which, admittedly, is an idea the film explicitly offers the viewer. At the end of the day, though, it's simply a rather sound investment of about two hours.

3 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for language)

Running time: 1 hour and 50 minutes

How to watch: Apple TV+

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