2023-08-05 17:34:00
Dedicated to Ty Warner, creator of the emblematic animal comforters of the 90s, the film by Kristin Gore and Damian Kulash Jr on Apple TV+ turns out to be a pleasant, if not revolutionary, office drama.
Behind The Beanie Bubble, one might think we see the “Barbenheimer”, the cross between Barbie and Oppenheimer so much fantasized by social networks and abundantly exploited by the overheated studios Warner and Universal in the direction of the current double cardboard. Consider the zigzag biopic of the inventor of a revolutionary toy, available in pink, capable of causing an explosion – that of a speculative bubble. After Air (2023), Ben Affleck’s film about Nike sneakers, here is the edifying story of the Beanie Babies, these cute colorful animal stuffed animals that shook America in the 90s. One of the first social phenomena to be picked up by the stammering Internet across the Atlantic and, above all, an object of desire for avid collectors who bought them and resold them at exorbitant prices. The mastermind behind this madness is a certain Ty Warner (a beardless Zach Galifianakis, who looks like John Goodman), the kind of somewhat sloppy, childish and narcissistic perverse visionary that American cinema likes to fill us with view, but also a warning about the misdeeds and paradoxes of individual success.
The Beanie Bubble has neither the frenzy of a Wolf of Wall Street (2013) nor the playful economics lesson bill of The Big Short (2015). Nor is it intended to probe the regressive, anxiety-inducing craze for that furry stuff that co-directors Kristin Gore (daughter of ex-Vice President Al Gore, another 90s product) and Damian Kulash Jr . put in the same bag as future Pokémon and cryptocurrencies. But the film has at its heart at least one angle superficially scrutinized by Nolan’s Oppenheimer: Ty Warner’s relationship with the three women who helped, shaped and supported him on his rise. And that he of course dropped along the way. Muses, surrogate mothers, embodied by partner Robbie (Elizabeth Banks), fiancée Sheila (Sarah Snook of Succession, used to managing billionaire egos) and young ambitious Maya (a lively, flexible and naive Geraldine Viswanathan , the real revelation of the film). Their convinced interpreters weave around Warner an office drama which, without having the formal ambitions, sometimes recalls a canonical series on ungrateful creatives in overheating, helped by their female colleagues: Mad Men.
The Beanie Bubble by Kristin Gore and Damian Kulash Jr., with Zach Galifianakis, Elizabeth Banks… 1h50. Available on Apple TV+.
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