Wasn’t Gremlins a fantastic movie? It had fantastic special effects, fun characters, cute marketing material, and… The Gremlins. Destructive little hell spawns that love to cause mayhem and destruction giving them their fearsome quality that most monsters have to give. But the Gremlins were also really funny and quirky, always laughing maniacally at all the pain and suffering the caused. Now what would you get if you took that and replaced the Gremlins with homicidal soldier toys? That would be Small Soldiers. And it’s unbelievably standard.
From the mind of Joe Dante we get Small Soldiers, the story of Alan Abernathy, played by Gregory Smith, who after receiving the brand new hit toys, the Commando Elite, and the Gorgonites, from his deliveryman friend Joe, played by Dick Miller, realizes that the toys are a lot smarter than they appear. Alive in fact. Thanks to the asshole scientist Larry Benson, played by Jay Mohr, placing in military grade microprocessing chips into the toys, the Commando Elite and Gorgonites are now alive and they wage an all out war against each other and Alan and his family are in the crossfire.
Small Soldiers is another case of a film jumping on the bandwagon of Toy Story, which came out only 3 years before Small Soldiers. But unlike other films that just wallow in the potential that the Toy Story formula gave and only create a derivative copy of it (*COUGH* Gnomeo and Juliet) Small Soldiers had the creative mind of Joe Dant. Joe took the Toy Story idea of living toys and made it his own. Let’s talk about the commandos. First there is Chip, the leader of the pack, and then… you won’t remember any of the other commandos’ names so you’d go by specialty instead. Like demolition, artillery, communication etc. All the designs of the commandos are very distinct and look exactly like if you gave the GI Joes a tanker full of steroids. Their personalities are very standard to bland, which ends in the commandos being not as funny or as memorable as the movie wants them to be. Except for Chip however who is just plain awesome firstly do to the excellent voice work of Tommy Lee Jones and secondly because he’s a fun villain all around, especially when he goes all freaky looking and villainous when he becomes part terminator.
The Gorgonites have the exact same issue as the commandos. Each of the Gorgonites looks very cool (which they better because they want to market the shit out of those toys) but none of them, except for the leader Archer who is played by Frank Langella, is anywhere close to characterized. They are each given a quirk and that’s their only personality. Like there’s one Gorgonite who spins and talks fast and… the others have nothing to them other than their design and hiding when there’s danger. Archer on the other hand is characterized quite well all things considered. The peaceful leader who’s looking out for others and by design a pacifist which makes the altercation between him and Chip all the more exciting and also rather anti-climatic.
When we move to the human characters however we start to see a lot less effort put into their characters. Alan for example really just fits the kid hero stereotype from a LOT of kids movies from the time, and he comes stalked with the disapproving dad, the love interest and the set dressing mom. Alan has zero distinct character qualities which makes it real difficult to give a crap when he and his dad argue, making the whole moral lesson at the end come off as contrived and half hearted.
Overall none of the characters are anywhere near interesting enough to hold the movie up. Alan isn’t interesting are proactive enough for me to consider him the main character. The Gorgonites or better stated Archer could be considered a main character but he’s not. None of the secondary characters either. So what is the main character of Small Soldiers? The animatronics, CG, and action set pieces. They’re the main focus creating an atmosphere like the kid’s version of a Michael Bay film. Weak characters and really overblown action scenes using CG and speaking of CG… Dreamworks certainly got better.
The action scenes are very well done, filled to the brim with very cool gadgets that the Commandos use to try and destroy the Gorgonites. One of my favs being the toaster they rig to spit out CDs that were on fire. And there can’t be a kid’s version of a Michael Bay movie without a few fiery explosions.
Small Soldiers is a film you do have to turn your brain off to enjoy. The explosions and action scenes (including any scenes of the Commandos going all A-Team developing their weapons) are the definite enjoyable part of the movie. The characters are all on the weak, and paper thin. They aren’t bad characters, keep that in mind, but they are very standard. If the prospect of a Michael Bay movie for kids intrigues you then please check out Small Soldiers.
Taylor Wyatt DC Blog 
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