Film

Small Soldiers

Name: Small Soldiers
Genre: Comedy, Adventure, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Action
Released: 1998
Cast: Gregory Smith, Kirsten Dunst, Denis Leary, Phil Hartman, David Cross

Joe Dante's toy-box war movie starts as a knockabout Toy Story knockoff and turns genuinely unsettling once the Commando Elite start hunting a suburban family with real military hardware. It's a satire of arms-dealer marketing wearing an action-figure costume, with practical animatronics doing a lot of the menace. Fun for older kids, properly tense for the adults who remember it scared them.

TMDb rating

3.3

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy loud, gleefully overbuilt family comedies that poke fun at consumer toy culture, where the gags come as fast as the explosions and the satire has real teeth.

Skip it if you find cartoonish war violence wearying with small children, or you want quieter character drama; it is loud, busy and rarely pauses for breath.

What it asks of you: Mostly your attention for its full runtime of about two hours, since the set pieces stack up quickly and the jokes arrive in bursts rather than a slow build.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Gremlins1984

Joe Dante's own template for cute-turned-carnage: adorable creatures that curdle into something genuinely dangerous, played with the same gleeful, slightly mean sense of humour he brings to the toys.

But The practical creature effects are dated in a way that's charming to some and cheap-looking to others.

Toy Story1995

The gentler mirror image: toys with secret inner lives, but here wonder outweighs dread, and the animation has aged into a landmark rather than a curiosity.

But If you came for menace, this leans almost entirely into warmth and sentiment instead.

Jumanji1995

Another suburban household ambushed by something that shouldn't be able to leave the box it came in, with the same blend of practical spectacle and family-adventure pace.

But The CGI animals look rougher by the year, and the stakes stay cartoonish rather than sharp.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Small Soldiers

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb1964

Both are comedies built on the same nightmare: a weapons system executing its programming with perfect, terrifying logic long after the humans who built it lose control.

The blackest possible satire of weapons that follow their programming past the point anyone can stop them — same fear, aimed at nuclear war instead of a toy chest, and twice as funny.

But It's talky, black-and-white, and entirely without the practical-effects spectacle you came to Small Soldiers for.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb poster

Child's Play1988

The straight-horror version of a toy that decides it doesn't want to be a toy anymore — same premise, considerably less comedy, considerably more nightmare fuel.

But It's a proper slasher, not a family film with teeth — keep kids well away from this one.

Mars Attacks!1996

Dante again, this time aiming his toy-soldier satire at the entire alien-invasion genre, with a starrier cast and an even meaner streak of slapstick gore.

But The tone is deliberately garish and dumb on purpose, which some find hilarious and others just exhausting.

The 'Burbs1989

Dante turning suburbia itself into the battlefield, with paranoid neighbours convinced something sinister lives next door — the comic dread that powers Small Soldiers, minus the toys.

But It's slower and more character-driven than a toy war, with barely any action set-pieces.

Toys1992

A toy factory gets quietly turned into a weapons manufacturer, and the satire of playthings and military money is nearly identical — just with more whimsy, less carnage.

But It's aggressively twee, and the tonal wobble between whimsy and menace never quite settles.

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids1989

Another backyard turned into a battlefield of scale and imagination, with practical effects doing the heavy lifting and a family genuinely at physical risk.

But It's aimed younger and gentler — nothing here is actually trying to scare you.

Explorers1985

Dante's earlier, stranger kids-build-something-they-shouldn't adventure, all homemade gadgetry and backyard ambition before the studio budget arrived — a nice look at where his instincts started.

But It's rougher and more meandering, and the famously nonsensical ending disappoints a lot of first-time viewers.

The Twilight Zone1959

Same premise stripped to its bones — a manufactured toy turning its violence back on the family that bought it — decades before Small Soldiers dressed it up as a summer blockbuster.

A twenty-two-minute black-and-white episode about a doll that decides it's had enough of its owner — pure dread, no comedy safety net, and it did the killer-toy trick first.

But It's a single old TV episode, not a feature, and the effects are just a voice and a stare.

The Toys That Made Us2017

Small Soldiers is a cartoon version of exactly what this documentary shows happening for real: toy companies leaning on military-adjacent design to sell kids on war as play.

A gossipy documentary series about the real toy industry — the G.I. Joe episode especially, where marketing men talk frankly about turning kids' war fantasies into a business, no fiction required.

But It's a nonfiction talking-heads series with no jokes or explosions — a completely different kind of watch.