Small Soldiers starts as Gil Mars (Denis Leary) the billionaire president of Globotech buys Hartland Toys & demands a new, bigger, better & smarter toy. Larry Benson (Jay Mohr) & Irwin Wayfair (David Cross) are on the job & come up with the Elite Commandos & their sworn enemies the Gorgonites, to add a little realism each mechanical toy has an ultra smart micro processor chip inserted, a chip which has the ability to think & learn for itself. Unfortunately the chips was initially designed for military use only & has the ability to learn & develop only it's initial software which in the case of the Elie Commandos is to destroy the Gorgonites by any means, when a boy named Alan Abernathy (Gregory Smith) takes an advanced shipment of the toy's to sell in his dads toy shop all hell breaks loose when the Commandos activate & go on a search & destroy mission...
Directed by Joe Dante who was probably looking for another hit along the lines of Gremlins (1984) Small Soldiers is a perfectly entertaining way to spend 100 odd minutes of your time in front of the telly but in the long term maybe isn't that memorable. The script by Gavin Scott, Adam Rifkin, Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio was probably written with kids in mind but I think Small Soldiers is maybe a film which will appeal to adults as well, it's a comedy action adventure film which works well enough & does pretty much what it sets out to do. Although having said that the technology on display here is nonsense, even if there was a microchip as sophisticated as the one featured in the film where would the miniature mechanics for the toy's bodies come from? I won't even mention the battery that never runs out... The character's take a back seat to the living toy's on show, the likes of Chip Hazard voiced by Tommy Lee Jones & Archer the peaceful Gorgonite have far more personality & presence than any of the human cast but then that's to be expected. The dialogue is alright, there are a few decent jokes & cheesy one-liners in here. The film certainly has a nice pace about it & it keeps moving along, there's some OK set-piece action scenes even if I thought they were a bit forgettable & didn't actually feel like they amounted to much. Not the worst film ever made but at the same time not the best, it's OK & entertaining enough for sure but it lacked a certain spark, a certain magic that all great kids films have.
Director Dante does a decent job & turns in a good looking film, there's plenty of CGI computer effects most of which look pretty impressive. The design of the Elite Commando soldiers is cool, they look all macho with exaggerated body proportions & I'd certainly buy one, OK maybe I wouldn't. As I said before the action scenes don't amount to much, the Gorgonites do nothing but either stand there or hide for most of the film while the Elite Commandos walk around a lot & say lots of military type jargon & one-liners but they too just don't seem to do that much. It's interesting to note that the American toy soldiers are the ones who become the bad guy's, the aggressors & the warmongers, considering this is an American family film it's an unusual & somewhat unpatriotic stance to take. Then again maybe I'm just reading far too much into what is a very simple & straight forward film, then again maybe I'm not...
With a supposed budget of about $40,000,000 this had a healthy budget & it looks very nice throughout, the CGI effects are good & it's well made. The toy Elite Commando soldiers were voiced by Tommy Lee Jones along with George Kennedy, Clint Walker, Ernest Borgnine & Jim Brown who had played soldiers the classic film The Dirty Dozen (1967) thirty odd years earlier. If your wandering about the other two Clint Eastwood would probably have been too expensive & Richard Jaekel was due to voice a soldier but he died during production. On the human side the acting is alright, Kirsten Dunst looks very young in this compared to her Sider-Man films while Phil Hartman was shot dead in real life shortly before the film came out.
Small Soldiers is a fine film, there's nothing wrong with it particularly but at the same time I didn't think it was outstanding, it's just my opinion but that's the way I see it. Try & catch it on telly for free.
Directed by Joe Dante who was probably looking for another hit along the lines of Gremlins (1984) Small Soldiers is a perfectly entertaining way to spend 100 odd minutes of your time in front of the telly but in the long term maybe isn't that memorable. The script by Gavin Scott, Adam Rifkin, Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio was probably written with kids in mind but I think Small Soldiers is maybe a film which will appeal to adults as well, it's a comedy action adventure film which works well enough & does pretty much what it sets out to do. Although having said that the technology on display here is nonsense, even if there was a microchip as sophisticated as the one featured in the film where would the miniature mechanics for the toy's bodies come from? I won't even mention the battery that never runs out... The character's take a back seat to the living toy's on show, the likes of Chip Hazard voiced by Tommy Lee Jones & Archer the peaceful Gorgonite have far more personality & presence than any of the human cast but then that's to be expected. The dialogue is alright, there are a few decent jokes & cheesy one-liners in here. The film certainly has a nice pace about it & it keeps moving along, there's some OK set-piece action scenes even if I thought they were a bit forgettable & didn't actually feel like they amounted to much. Not the worst film ever made but at the same time not the best, it's OK & entertaining enough for sure but it lacked a certain spark, a certain magic that all great kids films have.
Director Dante does a decent job & turns in a good looking film, there's plenty of CGI computer effects most of which look pretty impressive. The design of the Elite Commando soldiers is cool, they look all macho with exaggerated body proportions & I'd certainly buy one, OK maybe I wouldn't. As I said before the action scenes don't amount to much, the Gorgonites do nothing but either stand there or hide for most of the film while the Elite Commandos walk around a lot & say lots of military type jargon & one-liners but they too just don't seem to do that much. It's interesting to note that the American toy soldiers are the ones who become the bad guy's, the aggressors & the warmongers, considering this is an American family film it's an unusual & somewhat unpatriotic stance to take. Then again maybe I'm just reading far too much into what is a very simple & straight forward film, then again maybe I'm not...
With a supposed budget of about $40,000,000 this had a healthy budget & it looks very nice throughout, the CGI effects are good & it's well made. The toy Elite Commando soldiers were voiced by Tommy Lee Jones along with George Kennedy, Clint Walker, Ernest Borgnine & Jim Brown who had played soldiers the classic film The Dirty Dozen (1967) thirty odd years earlier. If your wandering about the other two Clint Eastwood would probably have been too expensive & Richard Jaekel was due to voice a soldier but he died during production. On the human side the acting is alright, Kirsten Dunst looks very young in this compared to her Sider-Man films while Phil Hartman was shot dead in real life shortly before the film came out.
Small Soldiers is a fine film, there's nothing wrong with it particularly but at the same time I didn't think it was outstanding, it's just my opinion but that's the way I see it. Try & catch it on telly for free.