Small Soldiers . Newcity Chicago . 07-13-98

Small Soldiers

DIRECTED BY: Joe Dante

REVIEWED: 07-13-98

Joe Dante hasn't hit the big screen since 1983's "Matinee," and while "Small Soldiers" could be taken as "Gremlins 3," you have to ask, why not? From the beginning, you hope for pop satire bliss when Kubrick's monolith is recast as a toy package waiting to be bathed in light. Dante is one of our great smart-ass directors, never pausing to become smug: his widescreen frames burst with detail and dynamic motion. In an eminently merchandisable take on toy merchandising, "Small Soldiers" posits a line of toys that are too smartÐgiven a mission of hate and a munitions-level microchip, they wreak havoc on a small Ohio town. Alan Abernathy (Gregory Smith) is a mischievous high schooler whose father runs The Inner Child, a failing shop filled with nonviolent toys. Enter the Commando Elite and the Gorgonites. (Also enter Kirsten Dunst as the puppy-love interest next door.) Dante manages to make something out of all the misbegotten flag-waving of "Armageddon" in his Norman-Rockwell-by-way-of-Mad-magazine world. We get the suburbs as backlot, never scenes shot on location. Dante's recurring image of kids on bicycles tearing around the backlot are his own, even from his television series "Eerie, Indiana." Streets curve or end in Ts, we never see the horizon, we remain kids, looping around an ever-present past. The only other locations (think "Explorers") is the backyard, then the moon and stars beyond. There's pint-sized mayhem galore in this romping satire posing as a kidventure, but the script also takes droll jabs at child psychotherapy, consumerism, war movies, backyard electromagnetic radiation fields, Barbie dolls and Spice Girls. DreamWorks should have its second $100 million movie of the summer. With Denis Leary, Dick Miller, Kevin Dunn and Phil Hartman. Stay after the credits for a brief final scene.

--Ray Pride

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