Scene Selects: Small Soldiers (1998)

Yeah, to echo you guys, this is such a special one, mostly because of the very clear 90s movie vibe that I think we all, you know, pine for in these difficult times and just the sheer scale of the puppetry by Stan Winston Studio.

And yes, of course, there are digital versions of these toys performing, you know, maneuvers in the film that were clearly impossible to puppeteer given their time and resources.

But they seemingly did as much practically as they could.

And I think Small Soldiers is special because the miniatures and practical set builds just seem to kind of one up themselves in scale as the movie goes on.

Mm

hmm.

This movie to me is like the equivalent of getting just a little dinky pocket size super soaker, you know, like it's fun.

You can spray people, but then you exponentially just upgrade it to increasingly ridiculous models that blast like gallons of water like a machine gun.

And it has batteries.

And, you know, there's just a certain point at which it's it's overkill.

And it's just so fun to watch a movie like this that's just trying to top itself through every scene.

So, you know, did the movie win the palm door at Cannes in the 90s? Absolutely not.

It's not an amazing film, but it does seem very precise in its ludicrous tone and creative intent, despite what Joe Dante has reported, you know, feeling about it many years later.

And so speaking of, let's give a few film notes on Small Soldiers for some context.