Toy Soldiers (1984) User Reviews

Pat em' down.....

[FlashCallahan · 4/10 · 15 September 2013]

While on a vacation in Central America, Tim Robbins, Jason miller spent a lot of time drinking, whilst some American teenagers are kidnapped by terrorists.

A rescue mission is sent after them, but they manage to escape and join up with a mercenary, because his movie career nosedived after Blazing Saddles to fight the terrorists.

And Sean Astin and Lou Gossett Jr., are nowhere to be seen....

So basically the film is bad. For most of it we have a fat bloke with a head injury, while the bearded terrorists try constantly to feel up the two pretty hostages, and this is nearly the whole of the second act. The rest of the second act is of Tim Robbins and the others argue with rich people and train.

Oh and one of them gets randomly attacked on the beach, and then justifies her joining of the rescue team because she's just killed someone. Hilarious.

Its by the numbers stuff, with poor one liners, and Jason Miller looking really embarrassed, and the rest of the cast either being really beautiful, or being the ugliest band of soldiers ever committed to celluloid.

As an eighties slice of cheese, its Roquefort, nice to look at, but pungent, and only nice in small doses.

Plus it taught me that as soon as someone dies, they either get covered in rats, or sent to an embassy in a bin.

Toy Soldiers is a by-the-numbers dud and is inessential viewing.

[tarbosh22000 · 4/10 · 12 January 2023]

A man known only as Sarge (Miller) is a former Marine and Vietnam vet who now takes college kids on vacations to Central America on his yacht for fun and profit. On one particular excursion near Panama, some of the kids are taken hostage by "rebels" AKA the usual El Presidente types. Sarge, Amy (Garber), Boe (Robbins), Trevor (Pointexder) and some of the others manage to escape back to L. A.

But, on the urging on Amy, they decide to get into training mode so they can go back to rescue Monique (Scoggins), the injured Tom (Greenleaf), and other kids from their group that were left behind. Towards that end, they team up with Buck (Little), a pilot and former soldier that's willing to help them. Eventually they face off against the Central American fighters during their rescue mission. But are these college kids true warriors...or a bunch of TOY SOLDIERS?

Someone should really ask Tim Robbins about this movie. I think we're all curious as to his experiences as far as the making of Toy Soldiers goes. It all starts off in classic Romp fashion, with guys and girls in bathing suits on a yacht, pulling pranks on each other and laughing it up while synths play on the soundtrack. This was probably the best part of Toy Soldiers. Of course, Robbins is no stranger to Romps, as he was also in Fraternity Vacation (1985), which shares similarities with this first section of the film.

However, after this initial first blast of fun, things settle quickly down into a mediocre, by-the-numbers dullsville that we've all seen before. Examples - some of which are better than others - include Night Force (1987), Out of Control (1985), Damned River (1989), and Hired to Kill (1990), just to name a few. When the audience is begging your movie to be more like Mankillers (1987), you know there are some serious issues at hand.

It's the same old-same old El Presidente slog we're all quite familiar with at this point. Toy Soldiers (not to be confused with that other Toy Soldiers from 1991) is boring and standard, with nothing to really hang your hat on. To add insult to injury, all the guys in the movie wear the shortest shorts you've ever seen.

Most of the "action" only appears at the end, when there's some shooting and exploding huts during the final rescue mission. But what about the other 80 or so minutes? Hmmmm...

While there are some fun musical cues and stings on the soundtrack, it's just not enough to overcome the movie's many flaws. Probably the most obvious of which is that there is no character development so the audience doesn't really care what happens to either the college kids or the Jason Miller or Cleavon Little characters. It should have been the latter two busting heads and fighting the baddies as the main thrust of the plot.

Much like an episode of The Golden Girls, we get a "highlight reel" of moments we've just suffered through behind the end credits. So we all have the privilege of saying, "Wow, remember when Tim Robbins and the nerd guy smashed the watermelon?" - because, as part of their "training", in order to face off against deadly machine-gunners with nothing to lose, they hit a watermelon with a bat.

Featuring an end credits song that sounds a lot like Bertie Higgins' "Key Largo", Alan Graham's "It Couldn't Be Better" is truly a misnomer. The song should have been, "It Should've Been Better".

Released by New World Home Video on VHS in America, Toy Soldiers is a by-the-numbers dud and is inessential viewing.

Entertaining

[zmoviefan · 27 January 2006]

I remember watching this action flick on late night cable years ago when I was still living in Mexico, for some reason it always tuck in my mind. Years later when I returned to the USA, being a huge b-movie fan bought a VHS copy at a video store going out of business. To this day, I still have the VHS and am thinking about buying the DVD.

Anyway, I like the beginning (the first 30 minutes or so) with the friends having fun on the yacht and suddenly finding themselves hostage in some third world country. The middle is a little boring in my opinion, just a lot of talking and nothing really happens, but once leading lady Ms. Garber and friends go for their kidnapped friends, it picks up and becomes funny and full of action.

The young cast is pretty good looking too.

This could have been a great MST3K

[jacobpleasants · 1/10 · 16 July 2008]

And in the context of MST3K, this may be worth watching. This movie is terrible, but I almost enjoyed watching it because it's just bad enough to incredibly hilarious. The plot is ridiculous and makes absolutely no sense, the premise is nonsensical, the acting is horrendous, and the action will make you cringe.

In one instance, scenes that are supposed to be the same time of day are just not: one of the scenes seems to have been shot around evening and the other is clearly in the middle of the night. There really was no attempt to make this movie anything more than a terrible little treat for us awful-movie fans.

So if you masochistically like to watch bad movies, I would recommend this one. I had a good time watching it. It's probably one of the worst I've seen in awhile.

It's better to avoid this movie.

[sauravjoshi85 · 3/10 · 9 June 2021]

Toy Soldiers is an action movie directed by David Fisher and stars Late Jason Miller, Late Cleavon Little, Terri Garber, Tim Robbins and Late Rodolfo de Anda.

A group of teenaged boys and girls got kidnapped by some terrorists is saved by a yatch captain with the help of their friends.

This is the type of movie you watch for no reason, no expectations, some time these kind of movie turns out to be surprisingly good but in case of Toy Soldiers this movies has nothing to offer, with some bad acting, uneven screenplay and senseless climax it's better to avoid the movie.

The movie serves no purpose at all, although it's a action movie but action is very minimal, on one side the terrorists are equipped with guns and weapons and the secret weapon of the hero is firecrackers, I mean seriously. The entire movie works on the whims and fancies of the director.

The acting is majorly average to bad and screenplay is uneven, the climax of the movie is predictably bad and serves no purpose. Avoid the movie if you can.