The Beanie Bubble

This acidly funny satire from Apple TV+ looks at the once-ubiquitous toy craze, the egotistical beta-male capitalist and the three women who actually made it a gargantuan success.

I’m not a big “stuff” guy. I don’t buy things just to buy them, I don’t feel any sense of stature from ownership and apart from some nerdly stuff in my late teens and early 20s I’ve never really been bitten by the collectibles bug.

(Well, apart from 5,000-pound hunks of rolling Detroit steel, but that’s an inherently self-limiting pursuit.)

So I have ony a vague recollection of the Beanie Babies craze from the 1990s. Suffice it say, smaller versions of preexisting stuffed toys became a hit not just with kids but with grownups who found they could buy and resell the plush collectibles at huge profits. There were literal fistfights and lawsuits over ownership of said plushes.

The human saga behind what became a multi-billion company is reflected in “The Beanie Bubble,” an acidly funny new satire. Like a lot of other business-centered comedies, its core mission is to reveal the titanic egos, mistakes and missteps of those who suddenly became fabulously wealth, and those who helped them do so.

Zach Galifianakis plays Ty Warner, the owner of Ty Inc., which produced the Beanies. It’s his story, but only in the sense that he is the locus of what happens rather than the driver making things happen. The real work and inspiration, the film argues, was done by three key women who worked with Ty and/or were in relationships with him.

Elizabeth Banks plays Robbie, a friend and eventual lover of Ty who started the company with him in 1983 and built it into a hugely profitable enterprise within a decade, but then went her own way. The story snaps back and forth between the 1980s and 1990s, depicting the period when Ty Inc. went “from millions to billions” due to the Babies.

Sarah Snook is Sheila, a single mom of two young girls who finds herself romanced by Ty, despite not wanting to be in a relationship and some piggish behavior on his part when they first meet. Her daughters actually come up with the idea of smaller versions of the existing Beanies, and even design some of the most iconic Babies. One of the things people initially liked about them was their tags with a little poem and the name of the person who created them.

Geraldine Viswanathan plays Maya, who joins the company in the early 1990s as a 17-year-old part-timer making minimum wage. She’s the first to see the potential of the Internet to create a community crazed about the Beanies, especially the debut of eBay. Maya keeps pushing Ty to embrace the collectibles fanatics, understanding that it’s what’s driving their sales; but he views the secondary market as just people taking money out of his own pocket.

Maya also has the foresight to understand that throttling the availability of the Babies by deliberately limiting production and retiring older versions is what fuels the demand. Like the other women, she eventually wises up that Ty is not going to give her the recognition and slice of the pie she deserves, and after she departs he floods the market with Babies and bursts the bubble overnight.

Basic men who stand on the shoulders of extraordinary women is a big theme right now in our culture, so if you didn’t get enough sly exploration/commentary on gender roles from “Barbie,” then his might just be your thing. The two could even make for a solid double-feature, though there may be transportation involved as “Bubble” only had a select theatrical run before debuting on the Apple TV+ platform streaming platform July 28.

Kristin Gore, a “Saturday Night Live” writing alum, makes her directorial debut (alongside Damian Kulash) and also co-wrote the screenplay with Zac Bissonnette. She shows a sharp eye for satire and vivid characterizations, though the pacing of the storytelling can drag at times.

This is one of those “true-ish” stories that banks on a lot of verifiable facts but takes extravagant liberties while molding them into a 110-minute feature film. “We made up the rest” is how the opening titles put it. I can’t verify, but get the sense Robbie, Maya and Sheila are composites of real women who factored into Ty’s empire.

The foursome of leading performances are all really good. I’m not familiar with Snook’s work but she embodies the role of a woman who’s smart and strong but lets herself be seduced by Ty’s charm, when he feels like displaying it. Banks, who has segued into directing, still retains her ability to empathetically reflect a steely identity hidden by vulnerability and self-doubt.

The standouts are Viswanathan and Galifianakis. (And gosh, ain’t that a basketful of vowels and syllables.)

She is pitch-perfect as a very young but self-possessed woman who’s been brought up by strict parents and a culture that teaches she should linger in the background and do what she’s told. It’s wonderful seeing Maya gradually realize that she is actually the smartest person in the room.

And Galifianakis gives one of his most layered and interesting performances as Ty, somehow making him both incredibly funny and truly loathsome. He doesn’t skimp on showing off the man’s charisma, Ty’s innate ability to make others feel better about themselves while simultaneously always postioning himself at the top of the totem.

Galifianakis is also surprisingly dashing without his signature beard and hangdog mien. Though Ty is a bit of a fussbudget about his appearance, leaning on a bouffant pompadour and frequent cosmetic surgery.

“The Beanie Bubble” is both a wellspring of laughs and cautionary tale. It’s a funny chapter in American industry because so much capital, both emotional and financial, were dashed on bright little soft toys that were worth literally nothing. At one point Ty misquotes a classic line that “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% presentation,” though in the end we realize he’s actually closer to the truth than we care to admit.

Just get some smart gals to do all the real work, and there’s no telling how far you’ll go.