Small Soldiers aka Demented Toy Story is a lot more entertaining than I thought it would be

I would categorize 1998's Small Soldiers as one of those childhood movies I vaguely remember and swore I conjured up in a dream. All I could remember is the scene where the Commando Elite go all "Frankenstein" on the Gwendy dolls (I guess the studio couldn't get the rights to use Barbie). Still, after doing a rewatch after all these years, I have to say I was thoroughly entertained.

Directed by Joe Dante, who made Gremlins, what makes Small Soldiers entertaining to me is seeing how much chaos and destruction a squad of toys can do. The Commando Elite, led by Chip Hazard (voiced by Tommy Lee Jones) are the true highlights of the movie. Seeing them plan and execute military operations by using standard household items was inventive. My favorites are referring to using sleeping pills as "chemical warfare" or blasting the Spice Girls song "Wannabe" outside a house and calling it "psychological warfare."

The movie also has a stacked voice cast, more than I realized until I saw the credits. You know Tommy Lee Jones and Frank Langella provide voices from the opening titles, but I couldn't believe who else provided the voices for the remaining Commando Elite and their Gorgonite rivals.

The other members of the Commando Elite are voiced by cast members of the 1967 war movie The Dirty Dozen. George Kennedy, Jim Brown, Ernest Borgnine, and Clint Walker all lend their voices. Another cast member, Richard Jaeckel, was also going to play a Commando but died before filming began. He was replaced by Bruce Dern. This makes me wonder if the filmmakers attempted to get Charles Bronson (who was alive at the time) or Donald Sutherland to provide voices as well.

The Gorgonites are voiced by not only Langella and Jim Cummings but by the members of Spinal Tap. That's right, Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer do voices for this movie. And it doesn't even stop there. The Gwendy dolls are voiced by Sarah Michelle Gellar and Christina Ricci to top things off. The voice cast for this movie simply blows my mind.

We also have a good live-action cast which includes Kirsten Dunst (who loves X-Files and Led Zeppelin), Denis Leary as a demanding boss, and Phil Hartman in his last on-screen role as he was murdered two months before the movie was released.

One last thing I wanted to mention was the movie's opening which includes news footage of the defense contractor GloboTech Industries acquiring the Heartland Toy Company as way to move into consumer products. To me, that whole sequence felt like something you would see in a Paul Verhoeven sci-fi movie like RoboCop or Starship Troopers.

What do you think of Small Soliders?

Submitted May 22, 2022 at 10:51PM by ggroover97 https://ift.tt/tXMNxIG