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).
After the success of 2014's The LEGO Movie, Warner Bros. released a pair of spinoff films before returning to the main storyline with a proper sequel in 2019. Directed by Mike Mitchell (Shrek Forever After, Trolls), The Second Part grossed less than half as much as the first film and scored nearly 20 points lower with critics. It's not a bad movie by any means—a terrific cast led by Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, and series newcomers Tiffany Haddish and Maya Rudolph certainly make it a fun, if less than innovative, 107 minutes—but its disappointing performance led to a conscious uncoupling between Warner Bros. and the toymaker. A rebooted film series is in the early planning stages at LEGO's new partner, Universal Pictures.
“As entertaining as The Lego Movie 2 ends up being — and let’s be clear, it’s still better than 99 percent of its competition — there’s something missing: that white-hot spark of insane creativity and out-of-the-box novelty that made the first Lego Movie such an unexpected, revolutionary surprise. Everything is still awesome. Just a little bit less so.” —Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly
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