Aug. 17 is Independence Day for both Indonesia and Gabon. This year, it also marks the 31-year and 38-day anniversary of the movie The Brave Little Toaster. Are these things related? Maybe, but I’ve not been able to find the connection myself.
I’m also 31 years old. It’s a pretty boring age, really. It’s a prime number, and that’s fun, but I don’t know what else is really going for it. The last few weeks, I’ve been able to look in the mirror and see a person I’d otherwise regard as an adult looking at me. That adult is me, I think, and this idea is extremely scary.
You know what else is scary? The Brave Little Toaster. At least, I remember it being scary when we were both five years old. I’ve grown up since then, but the movie has basically remained the same. It’s kind of sad, if you think about it.
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I don’t know where I’m going with this. What I’m trying to get at is that I watched The Brave Little Toaster last night, and I decided to document my observations as it went.
For those of you who don’t know the movie, the plot is pretty typical of toaster-based children’s films. The toaster and her ragtag group of other inanimate objects (in this case a lamp, an electric blanket, a vacuum, and a radio voiced by Jon Lovitz) are stuck in a cottage feeling abandoned, and then they set out on their own adventure to a city where a kid who is going to college now lives. His girlfriend wears a hat.
This movie could not be made today. For one, people don’t go to college anymore because it’s too expensive. Besides that, most of the plot holds up. Let’s go through it point by point.
Jon Lovitz is the first person to speak, which is an unfortunate choice. He talks about president Roosevelt a lot throughout the film, and that makes him an unreliable voice. We learn to distrust him immediately.
In the world of The Brave Little Toaster, electricity is confusing. The appliances apparently need electricity to go long distances, but they can unplug themselves and move about the house without issue. Maybe they all have batteries. Or maybe their limited sentience comes with a limited range. I don’t know. I also don’t care.
I think the lamp is supposed to be a duck.
To show some level of responsibility, the appliances all work together to clean a cottage. I don’t understand how the house gets dirty if there’s nobody around to dirty it up. I think this is to insinuate that there are ghosts. It would have been a better movie if there were more ghosts. More ghosts and less James Brown.
It’s weird hearing the term “master” all the time. To that point, it’s weird that they refer to the small child from the memories as master instead of the parents who probably bought all the stuff in the house. Was there a transfer of ownership at some point? Were these all very bad Christmas or birthday gifts? Who would give a child a vacuum? This is a very strange person-to-appliance dynamic, and it’s never explained.
Phil Hartman is an air conditioner. He’s a jerk. He’s my favorite. Unfortunately he got really angry, and then he blew up. He died. That should have been where the movie ended, but whatever. Off the other five appliances go like a bunch of idiots.
It feels unfair that the vacuum is doing all the work, but that’s just how life goes sometimes. One person (or appliance) often ends up picking up more than their fair share.
Jon Lovitz does way too much of the talking. I think I’d rather listen to a drill slowly inserting itself into my eardrum.
I’ll never understand how in most movies how everyone knows the lyrics to the songs that are ostensibly made up on the spot. Like,everyone will just kind of join in at once, and that’s impossible. You’d think someone would hit the chorus first, and then everyone can join in the second time around. But nope. It really breaks my willing suspension of disbelief.
I don’t think appliances need to sleep, but they seem to think they do. You spend your whole life around people who sleep, you’ll start to behave like them. Kind of unfortunate, really.
At one point the blanket is desperate to snuggle, but the other appliances are desperate for some level of personal space. The blanket should have snuggled with the chair. The chair is apparently one of the things without a conscious. The chair wouldn’t have minded a bit of a cuddle.
Eventually the appliances wake up from their snuggle-free nap, and find a pond where music is happening. How come all the wildlife know the melody to the song the appliances made up a couple scenes ago? What the hell is going on?
The animation is quite enjoyable here though. It advertises hugging a bunch of mice as a nice idea.
Then of course everyone at the pond tries to eat everyone else, and the toaster seems unimpressed.
It’s strange to me that all the things are so impressed with the toaster’s reflective surface. Puddles and stuff should have served a similar purpose in the past, right? At one point later in the movie, the toaster looks at itself in the pond, so it’s not like this is an implied impossibility in the world of this movie.
The toaster is a flower murderer. I think them leaving the pond is their trying to flee the scene of the crime.
I think if murder hadn’t been committed, they should have stayed at the weird body of water with the stoned animals.. Everyone seemed to love them there. They could have made a raccoon their new master. As someone who has taken orders from raccoons before, it’s not so bad.
The fighting doesn’t cease after the charming encounter with wildlife. These appliances have had 2000 days on their own to work out their differences. The fact they’re fighting this much now says a lot of unfortunate things about their character.
I think the lamp thinks the toaster is in love with the blanket. I think the lamp is right.
I think it’s weird that “the master” has a picture of himself next to his bed. He seems a little young to be a terrible narcissist asshole.
I forgot about the freaky clown firefighter scene with the forks and tidal waves. That is still kinda scary as an adult. I don’t like clowns, or firefighters, or forks.
The appliances wake up from their second nap to some lightning and a dead battery and a flying blanket. The blanket appears to be a goner, but the lamp is a selfless dude and decides to be a lightning rod to charge the battery back up which I guess is possible because reasons.
In doing so, his bulb blew up. I’m going to miss his bulb. He should be dead, by the way. All of these appliances should be dead by now. If he had a Hue bulb in his face, I would have been angry at him.
Vacuum is a hero.
To this point, the blanket has been shelter, the vacuum rescued the blanket from the tree, the lamp recharged the battery, and the radio was a navigator. The “brave” toaster hasn’t done anything of any value, but somehow she’s the hero of the story. I’ll be referring to this movie as “The Brave Little Lamp” until future notice.
The vacuum is mean.
Speaking of the toaster being useless, she nearly killed them all by looking at some waterfalls. Apparently she has to hold her breath (???) underwater too. Do appliances in real life have lungs? I doubt it. I think the toaster is just an exceptional liability.
The vacuum is a mean hero.
Good job losing the chair and the battery, toasteridiot. Idiottoaster. Dumbheadtoastermoron. I hate you.
Anyhoo, after everything goes wrong, the appliances fall in some quicksand only to be saved be a deus ex machina in the form of a bald fat man. Fat bald man has a badass truck. I hope one day when I’m fat and bald my truck is as cool as his.
Then everything goes wrong. You think it’s fun appliance hang out time but then- oh my god. No. No! Not the blender! I just fell in love with the blender, and now you’re going to kill it and harvest its organs? You’re a monster, bald fat man. You’re worse than the toaster.
This scene and song feature a popcorn machine. The popcorn machine is my new favorite. He’s adorable.
When I was a kid, I thought the song was “It’s like a movie. It’s a big movie show.” Turns out it’s “B-movie show” instead. That is much better. If nothing else, watching The Brave Little Lamp again was worth it for fixing that memory. I thought those lyrics were dumb as a kid, but I didn’t know what a B-movie was as a kid. Now I’m old and smart and good. I hope you are too.
Everyone escapes after the appliances pretend to be a ghost. Where’d they get that idea, you think? Maybe from living in a haunted cottage for years and years? Ghosts, baby. Anyway, I hope the popcorn machine finds a good home.
It needs to be said at some point: the toaster is a menace for making the other appliances leave the cabin. If they would have stayed put, “the master” would have just come to pick them up. But no, they trash the place and piss off. Everything the toaster’s done so far has been wrong.
There is some nice product placement for TDK in this movie. If you’re a fan of TDK products, this movie is for you..
Why does “the master”’s girlfriend have pupils that big? I guess I shouldn’t assume the two characters are dating. But they are.
Another song happens, and this one is probably the worst of the movie. It’s funny seeing a song about a bunch of appliances from 30 years ago being on the cutting edge of technology. That lamp is just a lamp, though. I hate that lamp. I wonder how it got to be on the same side of this argument as the computer and fancy TV. Bribery probably.
Then the high point of the movie happens. All the appliances who got in their own way and trekked across the country get thrown in the trash and “the master” brought Phil Hartman back to life! If only he could do that in the real world.
My cat won’t stop meowing. This is unrelated to the movie.
After the happy resurrection, the movie cuts back to the core group of appliances in a junk yard. This is appropriate. This is where they belong.
I used to have nightmares about the big magnet in the junkyard. Nightmares are fun. I hope we all have some tonight.
The junkyard song is extremely catchy. It’s a shame so many cars had to die to make it happen. I counted 56 dead cars. You’d think that’d be depressing, but the song keeps modulating upward. It makes it really hard to be sad like I’m supposed to be. Over and over again cars telling their life stories only to die the death of cubism, but the music is all like “yay let’s keep building the mood!” The song, while catchy, is dumber than the toaster.
When the song decides to end itself, we find the master looking through all the junk in hopes of finding junk appropriate to him. In doing so, he finds a picture of himself on the ground. The picture has absolutely no dirt on it. It wasn’t thrown out, it was left behind by someone who had been there recently. If I were to find a picture of myself in a junkyard in that condition, I would consider it a bad omen at best and evidence of a hitman at worst. Regardless, I would leave immediately.
Also, if I were metal, I wouldn’t pick a fight with a giant magnet. Especially one that can make scary electro-noises. Like phrooooom. And PHROOOOOM. It’s very intimidating.
The master disagrees. He looks at the magnet and says “Hey, magnet. You’re not supposed to fight people. People are off limits, and I’m a people.”
The magnet disagrees and dumps the people onto the conveyor belt toward the crusher. A small amount of debris lands on “the master,” and god, “the master” is weak. He gets a small piece of tubing on his wrist, and he’s helpless.
I don’t think he should have been admitted to college. I can picture the essay for his application “An example of a hardship I’ve had to overcome was the time I got a small piece of tubing dropped on my forearm. I could’ve been killed.”
But he wasn’t killed because the toaster decided to sacrifice her body for the human that abandoned her. That’s kind of messed up, but it’s nice that the toaster finally did something. It almost makes up for all the problems she caused in the first place. It doesn’t though.
Three final thoughts:
- I wish Chris would stop making the Dreamworks face.
- I want some toast now.
- Oh look the movie is over.
In conclusion, basketball needs to come back before I lose my mind.