THE TOYMINATOR

A gleefully mad collision between self-referential movie script and gumshoe noir/alien-abduction parody that mostly defies synopsis.

In this sequel to Rankin’s well-received comedy-fantasy Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse (not reviewed), animate, old-fashioned toys, plus a few human “meatheads” inhabit the aptly named Toy City. Former mayor Eddie Bear, thrown out of office for trying to make unspecified “changes,” drowns his sorrows in Tinto’s Bar and then sleeps it off in an alley—only briefly disturbed by a blinding light and the appearance of a duplicate Eddie Bear. The next day, determined to take up his former career of private eye, Eddie meets up with his sidekick, Jack the meathead. But on the floor of their office lies a clockwork cymbal-playing monkey, clearly dead, that crumbles to dust at a touch. Ordered by Chief Inspector Bellis of the city’s Laughing Policemen to investigate, or else be locked up for murder, our heroes find that all the cymbal-playing monkeys in town are dead. Soon, other mass killings take place, and Eddie and Jack must outwit their evil twins, UFOs, invading alien chickens, etc. Just when they learn why the toys are being murdered, a flying saucer abducts them and wipes out their memories. Jack shoots down a UFO and follows another “beyond the Second Big O.” He emerges in 1957 Hollywood, a landscape dominated by Golden Chicken diners, only to learn that Eddie has been kidnapped by his evil duplicate and taken to the sinister Area 52. Jack, meanwhile, meets Dorothy from Kansas and sets about pursuing the Great American Dream.

Inspired lunacy that will be relished by anyone with a taste for humor in the bawdy, irreverent, smart-alecky, wisecracking British style.