Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Isbel A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Eric Stevenson I consider this movie to be just okay and it's mostly because it's really hard for me to find anything good or bad about it. It's not like other mediocre movies where there's a lot of good and a lot of bad stuff in it. It just is what it is. This movie features toys being created that come to life and fight each other. The movie is mostly just boring. The thing is, it's pretty clichéd and it's basically nothing but "Toy Story" meets "Gremlins". This was an early film by DreamWorks and around the same time they were accused of ripping off Disney films.I guess this was meant to be an adult version of "Toy Story" but it really didn't seem adult at all and feels like it could have been rated PG. I remember when the film first came out and for some reason I thought it was about toys trying to take over the world. The main character and the romantic subplot are pretty clichéd and predictable. It actually does get kind of interesting at the end with the final battle. If you really wanted to see "Gremlins" with toys, then you should just watch "Krampus". Now that earns its PG-13 rating. This is by no means awful, it's just forgettable. **1/2

luke-a-mcgowan 1. This is one of those movies I watched as a kid and enjoyed now for nostalgia purposes. I think the DVD I watched this on was one of the first DVDs ever made.2. Top notch casting, even if some of the voice acting doesn't have the heft of Inside Out or The Lion King. Tommy Lee Jones aces it as Major Chip Hazard.3. Add a star for the Patton spoof where Chip Hazard recites every single cliché American speech line and turns it into the most patriotic speech ever made.4. The screenplay never takes itself too seriously but at the same time doesn't feel cheesy. Its a tough balance to walk for a movie about killer army men, but they handle it well.5. Its a delight to see Phil Hartman on film (his final screen appearance). Of the on-screen cast, Kirsten Dunst charms the audience easily as Christy and Kevin Dunn makes a mark as Alan's father. Gregory Smith is adequate as the film's protagonist Alan, playing him as a T2- era John Connor. Ann Magnusson has a very memorable moment towards the end with a tennis racket.6. Dennis Leary absolutely owns the entire screen as Gil Mars. I don't use that phrase lightly, but when Leary is on screen the whole movie is elevated dramatically. It is a Velma Kelly level of screen presence.7. The love story between Alan and Christy is goofy. Her boyfriend is barely an obstacle because she doesn't seem to even like him that much. She flirts with Alan in the same breath as saying that she only dates older boys.8. The battle sequences are fantastic, a great blend of practical effects and CGI. The use of standard house tools and items somehow raises the stakes to an incredible level.9. Its a great family movie but above all else it is just a delightful movie to sit down and watch. Certainly above average in all respects.

Rob Starzec Small Soldiers is one of those B movies which you would probably skip if you heard the premise of it. I revisited it today since it was on the Encore Action channel at the cabin I am staying in, and I can say there's a reason I did not remember much of this movie since watching it in my childhood.So the premise is basically this: take Toy Story, mix it into a live action film, separate the toys into 2 rival gangs who fight each other, and finally, make the toys dumber and more aggressive than they were in Toy Story. Oh, and make it PG-13, because if there's any way to improve a movie with a premise which should be kid-marketed, it's by making that movie PG-13.While the CGI is poor and the "action" of the film doesn't necessarily entertain me, Small Soldiers has some good thematic material, although it is somewhat typical of an action film of this nature. A good amount of the thematic material has to deal with not surrendering, fighting/violence is not the answer, and so forth. A good one that goes beyond the typical themes in action films is that a line is revisited: "Just because you can't see something doesn't mean it isn't there" or something along the lines of that.The way they set up the premise for this film was pretty strange; two toy engineers came up with two different sets of toys – one alien, one a group of soldiers – and their boss had the great idea of making the two sets rivals. Then, the guy who created the soldiers ordered microprocessors for both sets of toys, which happened to be used by the military, which meant the toys became very dangerous once activated. They became a type of artificial intelligence, though one side character described it as being more like "actual intelligence." To avoid the entire nation being terrorized by the aggressive "commandos," the film conveniently made it so that one kid who worked at his dad's toy shop would be able to "test" these toys before their actual release. This kid is, of course, the main character of the film, and of course he got his own romantic subplot with a young Kirsten Dunst.This film was a little bit of an upset in my opinion – they could have waited a few years until CGI was a bit better, they could have made this more kid-friendly which probably would have made it much more profitable, and the plot was somewhat sloppily put together. This film has a good aesthetic and passes for a good B movie, but it is not a film I would revisit often.

TheMarwood Joe Dante is in Gremlins territory again, playing with some surprisingly decent late 90's CG instead of puppets. But Small Soldiers wavers between anarchic Dante and lame studio formula. The opening 10 minutes with David Cross and Jay Mohr is dreadful at best and a showcase of lazy writing for what should be an exciting set-up for the toys that will soon wreck havoc. What we get is bad dialogue and Mohr ordering defense chips online - oooo exciting! If Dante is going to be knocking off his own Gremlins, the film would have been much better served by terrorizing the whole town with these toys, instead the story is limited to two uninteresting families living next to each other. Cross and Mohr re-appear like bad writing magic just when the action is getting going in the last act. This will hardly be remembered as one of Dante's best and sadly remembered as Phil Hartman's final film.