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 iconic troll doll toys—yes, their hair has always been that crazy—were first created in Denmark in the late 1950s but didn't get their first big-screen showcase until 2016, a few years after the rights to the doll brand were purchased by DreamWorks Animation. That 2016 Trolls film (which is better than this one, so it'll come a bit later in our ranking) was a box office hit, so a sequel was quickly greenlit. Another animated jukebox musical starring Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake, Trolls World Tour had the misfortune of being scheduled for release just weeks after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than shelve the film, Universal opted (controversially at the time) to give it a simultaneous VOD and theatrical release, and thus it isn't surprising that Trolls World Tour grossed $300 million less than its predecessor. Given that it has five credited writers—never a good sign—it's also not a shock to see it scoring a few points lower with critics. A third Trolls film is scheduled for release in November 2023.
“It's for kids and it's cute. It's also an absolute eyesore, crassly overstuffed with retina-scorching color combinations and explosions of glitter. Frankly, it's disappointing that an animated movie with so much talent attached didn’t strive to be more than just 'cute for kids.' But hey, at least you can dance to it.” —Kristy Puchko, IGN
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