Critics reviews

It surely disguises a smart, cynical satire as a Burger King toy, no matter how many reviewers missed it at the time, and setting the film alongside what it satirizes would draw that out deliciously.

One of Joe Dante's tilt-shift satires, where prejudices/desires/America get miniaturized to the size of toys (see also GREMLINS 2, MATINEE, certain parts of LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION) and tossed around, burned, played with... Some of Dante's funniest material is here, as is some of his creepiest, like the scene where an army of sentient Barbie dolls tie Dunst while blasting a Led Zeppelin song.

Although Small Soldiers (1998) occasionally feels like it is treading old ground, with its echoes of Gremlins, it is still an entertaining movie, showing a small suburban town overrun by toy soldiers fitted with computer chips to make them fight for real.

A trenchant satire masquerading as a summer kids' movie that's rude enough to suggest that the emotions and fancies underlying the make-believe war games boys like to play are not so different from the sentiments and fabrications underlying real wars, including our escapades in places such as Vietnam and the Persian Gulf.