Movies Based on Toys and Games, Ranked Worst to Best
Greta Gerwig's new Barbie film may be getting all of the attention this month, but it's far from the first film to attempt to bring a children's toy line to the big screen. While some of those adaptations have been dismissed as nothing more than feature-length toy commercials, others have been successful in spite of their origins. In the gallery on this page, we rank over three dozen such films from worst to best according to their Metascores, which represent the consensus views of leading professional film critics.
All of the films are based on pre-existing toys—including tabletop games and trading cards—though we have omitted any films for franchises that were already well established as television shows (or comics) prior to becoming toys. In addition, we have also excluded any films with fewer than four reviews from critics (our minimum required for calculating a Metascore)—a group that mainly includes direct-to-video features (including, by the way, most of the previous Barbie movies).
The only feature directed by screenwriter Stiles White, 2014's Ouija is a horror film based around the 19th century concept of a Ouija board used (theoretically) to communicate with the dead as a sort of parlor game. It's far from the first movie to prominently feature a such a board, but it is the first English-language film to use the name "Ouija," which is trademarked by the toy giant Hasbro. White's poorly-reviewed film finds a group of friends plagued by a series of deaths after using the board. Those negative reviews didn't deter moviegoers, who made the film a minor hit—to the point where a sequel (well, prequel) was greenlit.
“The ghost scenario that this boring, CW-ready, 'Scooby-Doo' gang uncovers isn't nearly as shocking as the blasé attitude they have toward friends dying off. ” —Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times
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