Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

Small Soldiers Blu-ray Movie Review

Toys to Life.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman February 9, 2021

A few years ago Skylanders (followed by Disney Infinity and LEGO Dimensions) promised that its toys would "come to life" by placing them on a portal connected to a video game console. Doing so would instantly make that figure -- Spyro the Dragon in the case of Skylanders and Buzz Lightyear and LEGO Batman in the other games, respectively -- appear in the game world. That was many years after Small Soldiers had a similar idea, but rather than the toys come alive in a video game, the film sees them come to life in the real world, interacting with real people and objects in both mischievous and consequentially dangerous ways. The film, from Director Joe Dante (Gremlins, Matinee), is a fun and imaginative, if not otherwise rote, picture that looks at what might happen if every kid's dream came true, that their toys would suddenly find life and cause trouble in the real world.

Gil Mars (Denis Leary), CEO of Globotech, has just acquired Heartland Play Systems. He has a vision of making toys “smart,” toys that play back with kids, toys that actually behave in real life as they do in commercials. He hears two competing pitches for new action figures but decides to merge the concepts, pitting a band of over-muscled Commando Elite figures against the Gorgonites, a ragtag group of hideous creatures originally designed to be learning toys but that are now the Commandos’ arch nemeses. One of Mars’ new employees, the ambitious Larry Benson (Jay Mohr), uses a military grade computer chip to build the toys; what could possibly go wrong?

Later, at a struggling small mom-and-pop toy shop with a “no war toys” policy, young Alan Abernathy (Gregory Smith) talks his delivery driver (Dick Miller) into leaving him a pre-street set of the Commando Elite and Gorgonite toys. Alan sees the potential in the figures and hopes to sell them while his father (Kevin Dunn) is out of town. He quickly realizes the toys are alive, for all intents and purposes, and befriends the Gorgonite leader, Archer (voiced by Frank Langella), and soon learns that the Commando Elites, led by Major Chip Hazard (voiced by Tommy Lee Jones), are anything but heroes. They’re hellbent on destroying the Gorgonite enemy at all costs, even if it means wrecking the world around them along the way.

Powered though the figures may be by highly advanced military technology, there's not much brain power in Small Soldiers, a fairly straightforward film of big imagination but middling dramatic execution. The film thrives on hitting stereotypes one after the other: the gruff and single-minded soldiers, the oddly lovable monsters, the troublemaker kid, the pretty girl next door, and so forth. The film pushes through by expending all of its creative energy on the title characters, the band of "heroes" and "villains" that are a mix of plastic and metal moving parts and plenty of processing power to allow them to believably come to life. But everything else the story has on offer is so full of holes as to make the proverbial Swiss Cheese look like a sieve. On the flipside, it's all done with tongue in cheek and, for the target audience -- young, probably prepubescent boys -- it's a dream of a movie, watching real toys (practically made for much of the film) walking and talking and fighting it out for supremacy of their basic programming.

The visuals effects are quite good, delivering believable movement and interaction with the human characters, in large part because these are practical figures made to actually work on the screen. Certainly they're cost prohibitive to mass market, but for a movie these are impressive toys, even if, again, there's an air of stereotype to their design and voicing. Director Joe Dante works hard to blend the elements and keep things in perspective even when scale may be a challenge, to accentuate what needs to be seen and understood in various action scenes pitting humans -- teenagers and adults alike -- against these much smaller figures. Action is fun and robust and the human cast, which includes a slew of excellent character actors working their on-screen magic, is game for all the drama, light humor, and physical demands the film can muster.

Small Soldiers Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

It's not been easy to find a poor Paramount Blu-ray of late, and Small Soldiers is certainly no exception. While the image is not the beneficiary of a full restoration, as is the case with many of its Paramount Presents titles, the studio has here issued a fundamentally sound presentation that does the movie proud. A light grain structure is in evidence and serves duty to render the picture faithfully filmic for the duration. The film is a little soft by its nature but finds sufficiently complex facial details and plenty of textures on the toys. Location details satisfy, particularly the densely packed toy shop where much of the story takes place. Color output is not so vibrant as to dazzle. It can even look slightly depressed at times, not to mention a bit on the warm side, but essential tones are certainly bold enough and there's a fair sense of tonal nuance at work. Flesh tones are reflective of any given lighting condition and satisfy on a scene-by-scene basis. Black levels are fair, certainly not the epitome of perfect but working well enough in nighttime exteriors and low light interiors to get the job done. Some banding accompanies the opening title and the odd splotch and speckle appear from time to time, but these issues are relatively minor. This is not the most abundantly colorful and razor-sharp picture in existence, but it appears to be a rather faithful recreation of the picture's film source.

Small Soldiers Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Small Soldiers delivers a fairly big DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. The soundtrack is of a good foundational quality. Musial fidelity is strong. Spacing and detail are excellent, particularly as lighter score flows across the front and more intense beats spill through the backs for added immersion. The track finds fun, amplified movement for its action scenes, such as when one of the troops propels himself onto Alan's bike in chapter six. Various scenes throughout the film see the Commando Elites flinging and flying and spinning and performing various actions that frequently translate well to Blu-ray, and combined with some additional sound elements, like a whirring garbage disposal or revving power tools, the net effect is quite involved and fun. A few lighter atmospheric helps fill in the background. Dialogue is clear and center focused start to finish. Like the video this is hardly the pinnacle of cinema or Blu-ray audio but listeners should find an agreeable presentation overall.

Small Soldiers Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This long-awaited Blu-ray release of Small Soldiers includes a featurette, a blooper reel, and a trailer. No DVD or digital copies are included with purchase. This release does not ship with a slipcover.

• A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Making of Small Soldiers (480i, 4x3, 11:20): This DVD-era supplement looks behind the film's construction: cast and characters, puppets and puppeteering, practical and digital effects, voice work, and more.
• From the Cutting Room Floor: Bloopers (480i, window box, 4:56): Humorous moments from the shoot.
• Theatrical Trailer (480i, window box, 2:13).

Small Soldiers Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Small Soldiers was obviously not the first film to bring toys to life. One need only look to Puppetmaster, released in 1990, and of course Pixar's debut film Toy Story which released in 1995 and revolutionized digital animation forever to find but two more examples. Small Soldiers is a blend of these films. It's more like Puppet Master in that it sees the intersection of living toys and the real world and more like Toy Story in that it's (more or less) a family-friendly affair. Paramount's Blu-ray presentation of Small Soldiers delivers good video and audio and includes a couple of extras. It's a fun movie and a decent Blu-ray that comes recommended.