{"id":3031,"date":"2009-09-05T09:27:26","date_gmt":"2009-09-05T13:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=3031"},"modified":"2009-09-05T09:27:26","modified_gmt":"2009-09-05T13:27:26","slug":"small-soldiers-1998-joe-dante","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/3031","title":{"rendered":"Small Soldiers (1998, Joe Dante)"},"content":{"rendered":"

More of a kids movie than I’d expected, after Looney Tunes<\/a><\/em> was more of an adult movie than I’d expected. Has the kids-in-charge feeling of Explorers<\/a><\/em>, but the kids are more horny, troubled teens than young dreamers. The movie, with its innocent toy creatures threatening a whole town and all its makeshift inventions, references its own debt to Gremlins<\/a><\/em> by throwing the word “gizmo” around as David Cross’s computer password.<\/p>\n

Sets up a fight between the military-chip-implanted Commando Elite (voiced by Tommy Lee Jones, Bruce Dern and the cast of The Dirty Dozen<\/em>) and the peaceful alien Gorgonites (Frank Langella and the cast of Spinal Tap<\/em>), joined by a frankensteined group of mutant barbies (Sarah Michelle Gellar and Christina Ricci).<\/p>\n

Purple whirling Gorgonite reminds of the Tazmanian Devil and one of the Twilight Zone<\/a> creatures:<\/em>
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I admit the barbies were my favorites:<\/em>
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Dick Miller, making his umpteenth Dante film appearance, plays the twinkle-eyed adult who connects with our young protagonist (and gives him the devil toys).
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Robert Picardo doesn’t get mentioned enough in these pages. He’s appeared in nine Joe Dante movies, most memorably as the cowboy in Innerspace<\/em>.
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Apparently it got somewhat-screwed with its PG-13 rating but still made a tidy profit, and probably helped get Dante Looney Tunes: Back In Action<\/a><\/em>, which probably killed his career for a few years. Dedicated to the great Phil Hartman, murdered a month and a half before its release.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More of a kids movie than I’d expected, after Looney Tunes was more of an adult movie than I’d expected. Has the kids-in-charge feeling of Explorers, but the kids are more horny, troubled teens than young dreamers. The movie, with its innocent toy creatures threatening a whole town and all its makeshift inventions, references its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8,422,454],"class_list":["post-3031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-joe-dante","tag-mr-show","tag-robots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3031"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3100,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3031\/revisions\/3100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}