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

6.6

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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.

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Something you would not have found on your own.

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

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