"Declare your allegiance," barks one of this film's twelve-inch action figures. OK, pal, my allegiance is to the late Phil Hartman, an actor of extraordinary comic gifts. What a shame that his final screen role traps Hartman in a noisy gimmick flick about toy soldiers that come to life and start kicking human ass. It seems that all the ingenuity was lavished on the toys. They include the mutant Gorgonites, led by Archer (voiced by Frank Langella), and the Commando Elite, testosterone-dripping soldiers, led by Maj. Chip Hazard (growled by Tommy Lee Jones).

It took a quartet of screenwriters to come up with the plot, which is surprising since the story is a rehash of Gremlins, also directed by Joe Dante. A corporation run by a smirking Denis Leary invents toys that turn out to be dangerous. The question is, will Alan (Gregory Smith), the teen son of a small-town Ohio toy-store owner, get to stop the malevolent Commando Elite before the toys are widely distributed, help the Gorgonites (they're the good guys) save the world, and kiss Christy (Kirsten Dunst) -- the babe next door? Hartman plays Christy's dad, a conspicuously odious consumer who saws down his neighbor's tree to install a satellite dish. With the recent tragedy, the filmmakers couldn't know that audiences might cringe watching Hartman's character running from an attack or being saddled with a wife (Wendy Schaal) who is woozy on pills. What they could have done was give Hartman a part worthy of his talent. He deserved better.

“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."