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).
Since first appearing on toy store shelves in 1981 under the name My Pretty Pony (quickly changed), Hasbro's My Little Pony line of horse figurines have had an often successful but nevertheless bumpy journey, leading to the toys being discontinued multiple times over the ensuing decades only to be revived again and again. Each rebirth also seems to bring a new TV cartoon adaptation, with five separate series to date. In addition to multiple straight-to-video features, the toys have also been adapted to the big screen twice—both times under the same title. Released in 1986, the first My Little Pony: The Movie does feature a surprisingly solid voice cast (Danny DeVito, Rhea Perlman, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, and Tony Randall), but critics panned the film, which went on to become one of the biggest box office bombs of the year (if not the decade).
“The sugary cuteness of the Little Ponies masks a corporate greed as cold and sharp as a razor blade.” —Charles Solomon, Los Angeles Times
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