The Brave Little Toaster is a 1987 animated film directed by Jerry Rees, written by Thomas M. Disch, produced by Hyperion Pictures along with The Kushner-Locke Company, and released by Walt Disney Pictures (who were the original producers). The film is known for its dark and unsettling undertones that are somehow overshadowed by its family-friendly premise. The plot follows five household appliances—the Toaster (a toaster), Lampy (a desk lamp), Blanky (an electric blanket), Radio (a vacuum tube radio), and Kirby (a Kirby vacuum cleaner)—on their quest to find their owner, Rob (also referred to as "The Master").
The film was based on the novel of the same name, written by Disch, which first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1980. Many members of Pixar Animation Studios were involved with this film, including John Lasseter, whose trademark A113 appears on Master's door, and Joe Ranft.
Plot
Five appliances (a radio, a lamp, an electric blanket, a vacuum cleaner, and a toaster) wake up and await their "Master", a child whom they have not seen for many years, with a growing sense of abandonment. When a car stops at the cabin and turns out to be a real estate broker placing a "for sale" sign rather than their beloved Master, the appliances spiral into despair. In-fighting begins between the house's array of appliances, the air conditioner becoming paranoid to the point he goes ballistic and overheats. Unable to accept that the Master would abandon them, the Toaster decides to head out and find the Master. The group rigs up a car battery to an office chair pulled by Kirby, the vacuum cleaner, and set out into the world, following the Radio's signal from the "City of Light", while singing the song of the same name.
During their travels from the cabin to the big city, the appliances have many harrowing adventures: they come across a colorful meadow where a flower mistakes its reflection in the Toaster's chrome plating as another of its kind, then wilts when the Toaster rejects its advances. A violent storm in the middle of the night blows the blanket up into the trees, and the lamp risks its life by using itself as a lightning rod to conduct electricity but also breaking his own bulb and collapsing. After recovering the blanket the group tries to cross a waterfall only to fall in and wash up downstream where they become hopelessly lost.
Having lost the office chair and battery, the group resorts to pulling the disabled vacuum cleaner through the swamp. After almost drowning in quicksand, they are rescued by a man called Elmo St. Peters, who owns an appliance parts store. At the store they meet a group of dismantled or simply broken appliances, who, after years of watching their friends being dismantled and torn to pieces, have gone insane, leaving everything down to fate. They begin to sing 'It's a B-Movie', describing their experiences as like a horror movie. Facing the prospect of being dismantled and sold, the appliances escape and head into the city.
The appliances arrive at the Master's apartment only to discover that they have been replaced by modern appliances who hold a rivalry against the others, e.g. a more maneuverable vacuum cleaner than Kirby, a hi-fi stereo who is better suited to the 80's than Radio, and two lamps who surpass Lampy. The modern appliances sing 'Cutting Edge' before tossing them into the garbage in the hope that the Master will take the newer appliances to college instead. When Rob, the Master, arrives home after failing to find the appliances at the cabin, his black and white television broadcasts advertisements for the garbage dump where the appliances have been taken. Rob decides to go there and buy replacements.
At the dump, the appliances watch as several cars are crushed to death by an antagonistic magnetic crane who sends them to a crusher. The cars sing of their lives before being scrapped in 'Worthless'. They attempt to foil the giant magnetic crane in order to allow their Master to find them. After being thwarted several times, the furious crane picks up the Master himself as well as all of the appliances except for the Toaster, and drops them on the conveyor belt leading to a gigantic compactor. In the climactic act of self-sacrifice, the Toaster leaps into the compactor's gears and stops the machine from destroying his friends and the Master. Rob returns to the apartment with all of the appliances in tow, including the mangled Toaster. Despite his girlfriend Chris' skepticism, he repairs the Toaster and takes all of them to college with him.
Cast
The five main characters, from left to right: Radio, Blanky, Toaster, Lampy, and Kirby.
- Toaster (voiced by Deanna Oliver), is a brave, 1950s style, two-slot Sunbeam toaster. The other appliances affectionately give him the nickname "Slots". Toaster has an optimistic and encouraging demeanor which it tries very hard to share with the other appliances.
- Lampy (voiced by Tim Stack), is an orange, flexible neck desktop lamp. Lampy has little patience for the bombastic Radio and the two usually end up fighting. Lampy is the only appliance who is clearly literate, as he was seen reading a phone book. He has no arms, but can use his electric cord and his plug as hands. His moment of glory came when he electrocuted himself during a lightning storm to recharge the group's battery.
- Radio (voiced by Jon Lovitz) is a tube-based dial radio. The Radio is the only appliance character without an anthropomorphic face. Drawing qualities from loud and pretentious radio announcers, Radio is prone to exaggeration and boasting, often narrating its own adventures in an over-dramatic style. Radio sounds like an early 20th century news reporter, making repeated references to that era, such as Teddy Roosevelt, Cab Calloway, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and World War II.
- Blanky (voiced by Timothy E. Day) is a fuzzy yellow electric blanket. It has a very simple, child-like mind and voice, and the others treat him as such. Lampy, Radio, and Kirby tease the blanket mercilessly, while the Toaster is much more affectionate toward him.
- Kirby (voiced by Thurl Ravenscroft) is an upright vacuum cleaner based on the Kirby Dual Sanitronic 80 from 1969. Seemingly cantankerous and bossy toward the others, it actually cares very much about them and risks its life to save them more than once. However Kirby cannot help but keep up the appearance that he is independent and being held back by the others.
- Air Conditioner (voiced by Phil Hartman) is a Nicholson-esque appliance who appears at the beginning of the film. He is sarcastic, having lost faith that the master is coming back, and taunts the others for their misguided hope. After Kirby taunts him about being stuck in a wall, he loses his temper and explodes.
- Elmo St. Peters (voiced by Joe Ranft) is the owner of an appliance shop. He first appears rescuing the protagonists from sinking in the quicksand. He has a pet dog named Quadruped, and drives a truck with abnormally large wheels.
- Parts Shop Appliances are a collection of appliances, in various states of disrepair, residing in Elmo St. Peters parts shop. All are gleefully fatalistic about their situation to the point of insanity. A hanging lamp resembles Peter Lorre.
- T.V. (voiced by Jonathan Benair) is an old black-and-white television set which the Master brought with him from the cottage into the city. T.V. is overjoyed to see his old friends from the cabin when they arrive at the Master's apartment. When the Cutting Edge appliances betray his friends, he takes it upon himself to help them in the only way he knows how.
- Plugsy (voiced by Jim Jackman) is a fashionable purple table lamp who seems to be the front man for the Master's Cutting Edge appliances. Plugsy has a deep voice and a large, round bottom lip. Plugsy agrees from the start with his Cutting Edge friends to get rid of Toaster and his friends.
- Cutting Edge Appliances are the collection of modern, 1980's-era appliances currently residing in the Master's apartment. They are disappointed that the Master plans to bring his old and obsolete appliances with him to college and when the appliances from the cabin arrive unexpectedly, they plot to get rid of them out of jealousy.
- The Giant Magnet is a voiceless antagonist, appearing near the end of the film at Ernie's Disposal. Although merely performing a job when first introduced, it soon becomes a true villain, persistently stalking the appliances to ensure their destruction.
- Worthless Cars populate the junkyard where the appliances are taken, each sounding off about the exciting lives they used to have before they arrived at the junkyard.
- Rob and Chris (voiced by Wayne Kaatz and Colette Savage respectively). Rob is better known as "The Master" and is the owner of the appliances. He has an unusually strong nostalgic attachment to them. Chris is his tomboy girlfriend who accompanies him to Ernie's Disposal.
Production
The film rights to The Brave Little Toaster, the original novel, were bought by the Disney Studios in 1982, two years after its appearance in print. After John Lasseter and Glen Keane had finished the short 2D/3D test film based on the book, Where the Wild Things Are, Lasseter and Thomas L. Wilhite decided they wanted to make a whole feature this way. The story they chose was The Brave Little Toaster, but in their enthusiasm, they had issues when they pitched the idea. One of them, animation administrator Ed Hansen disliked it so much that when Lasseter and Wilhite tried to sell the idea to him and Ron Miller, which they at that time were already aware of, they rejected it due to the idea of having traditionally animated characters inside more-costly computer-generated backgrounds.[2] A few minutes after the meeting, Lasseter received a phone call from Hansen and was asked to come down to his office, where Lasseter was told that his job had been terminated. The development was then transferred to the new Hyperion Pictures, the creation of former Disney employees Wilhite and Willard Carroll, who took the production along with them.[3]
With Disney backing the project, Toaster soon turned into an independent effort; the electronics company TDK and video distributor CBS-Fox soon joined in. In 1986, Hyperion began to work on the story and characters, with Taiwan's Wang Film Productions for the overseas unit.[3] The cost was reduced to $2.3 million as production began. Jerry Rees, a crew member on two previous Disney films, The Fox and the Hound and Tron, and a friend of Lasseter, was chosen to direct the film, and was also a writer on the screenplay along with Joe Ranft. Rees' inspiration for voice casting came from the Groundlings improvisational group, some of whose members (Jon Lovitz, Phil Hartman, Timothy Stack, and Mindy Sterling) voiced characters in the film. Lovitz and Hartman were stars of Saturday Night Live at the time. The color stylist was veteran Disney animator Ken O'Connor, a member of Disney's feature animation department from its establishment.[3]
Music
The Brave Little Toaster has songs by Van Dyke Parks and a score composed and conducted by David Newman. Newman's score for this movie was one of his earlier works and apparently one that he felt very close to. He did not view it as an overly happy film and decided to give it a dramatic score to go with that idea.[citation needed]
- "City Of Lights" is sung by the five main appliances as they set off in search of the Master. It becomes a theme for the orchestral score throughout the rest of the film.
- "It's a 'B' Movie" is performed by the demented parts shop appliances, who have lost their minds after watching Elmo St. Peters dismantle their own kind for spare parts. It features a pipe organ as one of the main instruments is a homage to various famous horror films.
- "Cutting Edge" is a song with a techno beat composed almost entirely of synthesized instruments, sung by the Cutting Edge appliances in affirmation of their superiority.
- "Worthless" is sung by the junkyard's broken down cars, each singing a few verses about their life before being smashed and killed by the compactor.
Release
The Brave Little Toaster was initially released on July 10, 1987, and made its way to the Sundance Film Festival the following year. Despite being a favorite with festival audiences, it failed to find a distributor. Disney, who held the video and television rights, withdrew its official theatrical distribution, intending it to be shown on its new premium cable service instead. The buzz it generated at Sundance dissipated, and it only received limited theatrical airings through Hyperion, mainly at arthouse facilities across the U.S., and most notably at the Film Forum in New York City, in May 1989. Disney finally premiered the film on home video in July 1991 and, throughout the '90s onward, it enjoyed popularity as a rental amongst children as well as a Parent's Choice Award win. The VHS was re-issued in 1994 in traditional Disney white clamshell packaging, followed by another VHS release in 1998. The film was released on DVD in 2002.
Reception
The film became a cult favorite with audiences. The original film has garnered a 75% rating on the reviews website, Rotten Tomatoes.[4] The Washington Post called the film, "a kid's film made without condescension".[5] The Brave Little Toaster received an Emmy nomination for Best Animated Program in 1988. It was followed by two sequels, The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars (1998), also written by Disch, and The Brave Little Toaster to the Rescue (1999). The two sequels were released out of chronological order; To the Rescue takes place before Goes to Mars.
Controversy
The Brave Little Toaster, is exceptionally dark and gloomy in tone for a Disney film, and caused some controversy upon its release; despite being made at a time when darker animated features such The Black Cauldron and The Secret of NIMH were common. Scenes include the Air Conditioner exploding, as a result of going into a frustrated rage, a frightening nightmare sequence featuring an evil clown, a scene where a blender's motor is pulled out, killing the blender, and a few instances of profanity (In one instance, "damn" and "hell" are used in the same sentence). During film's climax, the song "Worthless", a giant magnet kills no fewer than eight wrecked automobiles (including a racecar, a wedding car, a hearse, and a passenger van) by dropping them into a trash compactor.
Comparisons to book
- In the book by Thomas M. Disch, the character of Air Conditioner is only mentioned by one of the characters. It mentions that the air conditioner died when it passed its expiration date.
- The appliances are not depicted as either male or female (to be exact they have no names) in the book. They are individually called "it". In the film version, Toaster, Blanky, Lampy, Radio, Kirby, the Air Conditioner, and all the other appliance characters are depicted as males and females, having names.
- In the book, Blanky is more fully grown, to judge by the book's illustrations of him. In the film version, Blanky is depicted as a young child.
- In the book, Radio is actually a clock-radio and has a face.
- In the book, when Blanky is stuck in a tree after being blown away, Toaster and the others ask two squirrels living in the tree for their help.
- In the book, Kirby is said to be the leader of the group instead of Toaster. Also in the book his name is "Hoover".
- The ending is very different. The Toaster and the group arrive at the Master's house, only to find the Cutting Edge appliances have replaced them. They turn out to be much kinder than they were in the movie and help the main five enter themselves on a radio show, where they are "swapped" by an old lady for several kittens that surprise the Master and his wife when they come home. The Toaster and the rest live happily ever after with a new owner.
- When they come across the waterfall, it isn't a waterfall, it's a river and they find a boat to solve the problem.
- The part shop owner is actually the junkyard owner.
See also
References
Sources
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