Small Soldiers Directed by Joe Dante With Gregory Smith, Kirsten Dunst and Phil Hartman A L S O_.T O D A Y Blue Glow "Gulliver," "Odyssey," "The Stand": Return of the big minis Y E S T E R D A Y Madeline Reviewed by Fiona Morgan "Madeline": The kid's got spunk R E C E N T_. M O V I E S Home Movies By Charles Taylor Summery, sensuous fun: "High Season" and "Rough Magic" (07/07/98) Without reservations By Mary Elizabeth Williams A conversation with "Smoke Signals'" Sherman Alexie (07/02/98) Armageddon Reviewed by Charles Taylor This summer's other meteor movie is so dumb and unimaginative, it would even embarrass NASA (07/01/98) Home Movies By Charles Taylor "The Border": Jack Nicholson's broken promised land (06/30/98) American Squirm By Sarah Vowell Fishers of men: Two offbeat TV talk shows reinvent the celebrity interview (06/29/98) BROWSE THE MOVIE ARCHIVES COLUMNS FEATURES REVIEWS INTERVIEWS

HOW MUCH MAYHEM CAN A BUNCH OF FOOT-HIGH ACTION FIGURES INCITE? IN "SMALL SOLDIERS," PLENTY. BY SCOTT ROSENBERG | At the beginning of "Small Soldiers," a CEO points at the presentation screen: He's just watched a clip of a G.I. Joe-like action figure punching its way out of its cellophane-and-cardboard packaging. "Can they really do that?" The marketing exec shakes his head no. The boss explodes: "What if these toys could actually work, talk, kick ass? What if they could do what they do in the commercials?" That question is much on Hollywood's mind these days, first in Disney's groundbreaking computer-animation hit "Toy Story," and now in the chipper satire "Small Soldiers." In this new, decidedly more anarchic take on the theme, militaristic action-figure toys run amok. Let's give the film industry a break and assume this obsession is about more than mere tie-in toy merchandising. To make a special effects-laden film today is to become an expert in making toys -- physical or digital -- walk and talk and "kick ass." It's a complex and expensive discipline, but it's aimed at a frequently trivial goal, and surely at the end of the day its practitioners must sometimes sink into a gloom of self-doubt. Like "Toy Story's" space-commander hero Buzz Lightyear in his dark night of the toy soul, they must wonder: What's the dignity in this racket, anyway? "Toy Story" embraced innocence and taught Buzz that being the center of a young boy's play-world was a fine enough thing. "Small Soldiers" is more worldly and more cynical. That's partly because its human toy-master, a 15-year-old named Alan (Gregory Smith), is older than "Toy Story's" kid. Even more, it's because "Small Soldiers'" creators take a determinedly jaded view of both "action toys" and Hollywood's own action heroes. The film bears a fairly heavy-handed message about The Evil That Is War Toys and a cautionary invocation against corporate domination of the entertainment market. Fortunately, it's possible to ignore the morals entirely and simply enjoy the filmmakers' skill at creating carefully contained mayhem in a microcosm. The diminutive title "Small Soldiers" must have made someone on the Universal/Dreamworks marketing team nervous -- the film's ads are dominated by the words "BIG MOVIE." But in fact, "Small Soldiers" is a little movie, and that's part of its charm: It plays unsettlingly with your sense of scale. One minute it reassures you that foot-high dolls can't possibly harm a real teenager and his family; the next, it's transforming those dolls into a lethal brigade of Green Beret-class commandos that you wouldn't want to encounter in a dark playroom. N E X T_P A G E _| Prepare for death with honor, cowardly Gorgonite scum!

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