War Games (Batteries Not Necessary)

“Small Soldiers” is a little boy’s fantasy of toys come to life. And like small boys it is often charming and funny, occasionally malicious, and finally too focused on gizmos and effects for its own good.

What if, wonders Gil Mars (Denis Leary), the rapacious CEO of Globotech Industries, toys were so smart that when you played with them they played back? What if they could do in real life everything they do in commercials? Wouldn’t that be great for business?

Mars is wondering all this because Globotech, whose motto is “bringing advanced battlefield technology into consumer products,” has just bought a toy company called Heartland Play Systems with an eye toward greatly increasing its profits.

Heartland executives Irwin (David Cross) and Larry (Jay Mohr) are not without ideas of their own. The kindly Irwin’s dreamed up the Gorgonites, sweet-natured aliens lost on Earth, while the ruthless Larry has come up with Maj. Chip Hazard, the hard-driving head of a dreaded force called the Commando Elite.

Not revolutionary ideas, perhaps, but that’s where Globotech’s access to military technology pays off when these foot-long action figures get built. Powered by the super-secret X-1000 microchip, the Major and his five cohorts have no trouble more than living up to their “everything else is just a toy” tag line.

These toys are supposed to debut on a Monday, but a kindly delivery driver named Joe (the veteran Dick Miller) lets young Alan Abernathy (Gregory Smith), who’s minding the family store in a mythical small town, get some a few days early.

New to town, Alan has a crush on Christy Fimple (Kirsten Dunst), the fetching girl next door, whose doltish father (Phil Hartman, in his last role) is a worshiper of all things technological. But even he is unprepared when the Commandos, programmed to consider the Gorgonites deadly enemies, evacuate their boxes and cause all heck to break out.

With his experience directing “Gremlins” and his affinity for 1950s sci-fi schlock, Joe Dante is the obvious person to be in charge here, and he does bring both sweetness and a sense of satiric comedy to the film’s human relationships.

Of course, it’s not the people whom audiences will be coming to “Small Soldiers” to see; it’s the toys. The idea of playthings springing to life is not new (and veterans of “Toy Story” know all about war toys cooperating), but technology marches on, and these toys, combining the animatronic skills of the Stan Winston Studio and the computer-generated images of Industrial Light & Magic, are definitely state of the art.

“Small Soldiers’ ” best move was the actors it recruited for vocal talent. Tommy Lee Jones does a magnificent job as the gruff Major, and someone had the clever idea of signing up veterans of “The Dirty Dozen” (Ernest Borgnine, Jim Brown, George Kennedy, Clint Walker) for his commando team.

It’s not clear which of the four credited writers (Gavin Scott and Adam Rifkin, Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio) wrote the military patter, but with lines like “Gorgonite scum, we have ways to make you talk” and “It’s only a flesh wound, sir” (spoken by a toy that’s been cut in half) it amounts to a great spoof of classic war movies.

The Gorgonites are finely vocalized as well, starting with the dulcet tones of Frank Langella as Archer, their leader, and continuing with the gang from “This Is Spinal Tap” (Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer) as his companions. But one of the problems with “Small Soldiers” is that these creatures are not as intriguing as the Commando crew and play rather too much like leftover critters from the “Gremlins” movies.

In fact, just like those films, “Small Soldiers” finally gets too obsessed with its creatures and too involved with the ways and means they use to attack the humans that get in their way. Though it starts promisingly, the picture ends as a standoff between the affection Dante and company bring to the project and its increasingly frenetic and tiresome emphasis on what special effects can make its little people do. Letting the toys take over may make for great merchandising, but it’s hell on motion pictures.

* MPAA rating: PG-13 for some menacing action/violence and brief drug references. Times guidelines: considerable cartoon violence.

‘Small Soldiers’

Kirsten Dunst: Christy Fimple

Gregory Smith: Alan Abernathy

Jay Mohr: Larry Benson

Phil Hartman: Phil Fimple

Kevin Dunn: Stuart Abernathy

David Cross: Irwin Wayfair

Ann Magnuson: Irene Abernathy

Dennis Leary: Gil Mars

A DreamWorks Pictures and Universal Pictures presentation, released by DreamWorks Pictures. Director Joe Dante. Producers Michael Finnell, Colin Wilson. Executive producer Walter Parkes. Screenplay by Gavin Scott and Adam Rifkin and Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio. Cinematographer Jamie Anderson. Editor Marshall Harvey. Costumes Carole Brown-James. Music Jerry Goldsmith. Production design William Sandell. Art director Bradford Ricker. Set decorator Rosemary Brandenburg. Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes.

* In general release around Southern California.