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Children younger than 5 might enjoy the story but be frightened by the strong imagery - even if it's just appliances being hurt, they're appliances the audience grows to care about.The story opens with a description of five members of a family of minor home appliances left in the cottage, listed from oldest to youngest. Most of the humor comes from the smartly written dialogue and Radio ( Jon Lovitz) runs away with all the good lines, as when he tells shorted-out Kirby to recover by making "even carpet sweeping motions!" Another nice touch is the appliances who seem to be channeling Hollywood celebrities, like the air conditioner who sounds suspiciously like Jack Nicholson.
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Visual comedy is at a minimum, though the scenes of the appliances considering different transportation modes (pogo sticks, refrigerators on wheels) are funny. The animation seems a bit dated and grainy, but it somehow acts to reinforce the notion that the appliances are out of pace with their city competitors. It also opens the door to a dialogue about the disposable culture in which we live, where appliances can be dumped in favor of a newer model even when they work just fine. Disch, makes the audience root for the appliances and their plucky determination. At an older age they may be able to handle it, but why would they want to? There are so many better cartoons out there.ĭisney's THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER, which was written by sci-fi writer Thomas M. Maybe I'm just too sensitive).Īnyway, I say all of that to tell parents not to let little children see this movie. This scene was entirely inappropriate for a children's film, as the cars are anthropomorphic in nature and you grow to care for them just before their lives are cut tragically short (I'm 22 years old and I still get tears in my eyes when I think about it. Also, the compactor has these really menacing teeth that repeatedly open and close as the cars are being brought to it.
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Moreover, the cars are singing about death on the way to the compactor, and there is this big magnet picking them up that has these menacing eyes. About 8 cars are crushed into little tiny cubes that looked like bouillion cubes.
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The scene with the compactor was the worst. These scenes include the air conditioner blowing up, the lamp getting struck by lightning, the infamous clown scene (which made me cry), and the scene where the cars were being smashed by the compactor. When I was around 6, my mother left me in the nursery while she went shopping at the grocery store, and the babysitter let us watch this movie.
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