The Brave Little Toaster

An animated film with household appliances in the leading roles. There is a summer house. It was shut up years ago and five appliances are left inside: a toaster, a lamp, a blanket, a radio and a vacuum cleaner. The appliances are waiting. They believe the boy of the house will come back and run to the window at the sound of every car. Then a sign appears. The house is for sale and it becomes clear that nobody is returning. They decide to set out. They fit wheels to a chair and go to the city. From there the film is a journey. A forest, a storm, a marsh, a junk shop and a scrapyard. There are dangers along the way. The appliances fall into water, come apart, and one of them is damaged beyond repair. What the narrative is interested in is not adventure but being discarded: throughout the film the real fear is not breaking but no longer being used. The section in the scrapyard is its best known part. Old cars waiting to be crushed tell their own stories in turn, and it is unexpectedly dark for a children's film. There are nightmares as well. The toaster's dreams are built in the language of horror cinema. The source is a short novel by Thomas M. Disch. The production has a back story too. The project was first proposed at Disney to be made with computer animation, the proposal was rejected, and the animator who brought it had to leave the studio; that person later became one of the founding figures of computer animation. Deanna Oliver, Jon Lovitz, Timothy Stack and Phil Hartman are among the voices. Jerry Rees directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes hand-drawn animation of the 1980s and unusual children's films. Who it is not for: anyone looking for something calm for small children; some sections are genuinely frightening.