The Indian in the Cupboard Review (1995) (Throwback Thursday #6)
Director: Frank Oz
Writer: Melissa Mathison
Starring: Hal Scardino, Litefoot, Lindsay Crouse, Richard Jenkins, David Keith, Steve Coogan
Release Date: July 14, 1995
I played with action figures as a kid. Wrestling figures mostly, so the idea of toys coming to life always hit a little differently for me because those were already real people made plastic. But I had fictional characters too, and the concept of a toy just waking up one day, tiny and alive and stuck in your room, is the kind of premise that should be endlessly watchable. The Indian in the Cupboard had that premise and I’m still not entirely sure what it did with it.
The setup is simple enough. Omri (Hal Scardino) gets a wooden cupboard for his birthday and discovers that locking a toy inside brings it to life. The first toy he brings to life is a small plastic Native American, who turns out to be a real Iroquois warrior named Little Bear (Litefoot), pulled out of his own time period and now standing in the palm of a child’s hand in a Brooklyn bedroom. His friend Patrick eventually brings to life a cowboy named Boone (David Keith), and the film is mostly built around the relationships between the boys and their tiny, bewildered guests.
Here’s where the film gets interesting, and also where it gets stuck. The movie fully commits to the idea that these aren’t toys anymore. Little Bear is a real person with a real history, real grief, and a real life that has been interrupted. He’s a widower. He has a tribe. He has a world, and now he’s standing in front of a nine-year-old who sees him as something miraculous rather than someone displaced. There’s a genuinely uncomfortable undertone to all of it when you stop and think about it, and the film occasionally pokes at that. Little Bear sees old Western footage on TV, watches his people being slaughtered in grainy black and white, and his reaction is raw and real. He fires an arrow at Boone in rage. It’s one of the only moments where the film feels like it has the nerve to follow through on what it’s actually set up.
But then it backs off. Because this is a kids’ movie, and kids’ movies in 1995 weren’t going to sit with that kind of discomfort for very long. The dramatic weight the premise deserves keeps getting softened just when it should land. The film isn’t mean-spirited about it. It’s just cautious. And that caution is exactly the problem.
There’s also the comedy angle that never gets explored. A tiny warrior discovering the modern world has Honey, I Shrunk the Kids energy waiting to be unleashed and the film barely touches it. Little Bear is played mostly straight, which is admirable in its own way, but the film passes up scene after scene that could have been genuinely funny without undermining the character’s dignity. It’s a choice, but not one that pays off.
Litefoot is actually good here. He brings a real presence to Little Bear and makes you believe in the character in a way the script doesn’t always earn. David Keith gets the more comedic role as Boone and he’s fine. I’d enjoyed Keith as a kid going back to his turn as Jack Parkman in Major League 2, the arrogant catcher who comes in trying to push Jake Taylor out of the starting spot and ends up being the guy everyone roots against. It’s a different kind of role here, more of a fish out of water than anything else, but Keith handles the comedy beats well enough.
The miniature effects hold up reasonably well for 1995. Frank Oz, who built his entire career on making small things feel real and alive, is probably the perfect director for this material on paper.
Hal Scardino is the weak link. Omri is supposed to be our way into this story and he’s just irritating. There’s nothing charming or grounded about the performance. He’s reactive in all the wrong ways and you spend much of the movie wishing someone else was holding the cupboard.
The film isn’t bad. It’s watchable. It has moments where you can see exactly what it was trying to be and almost gets there. But it never fully commits in either direction. It isn’t funny enough to be a comedy and isn’t brave enough to be the drama the premise is quietly begging for. It occupies the middle ground completely, satisfied to be a fine afternoon movie that kids won’t hate and adults won’t remember. That’s not nothing, but it’s not enough.
The Indian in the Cupboard gets a two out of five: MUNDANE.
If you enjoyed this one, check out my review of another mid-90s kid flick, Blank Check. You can browse the full Throwback Thursday archives by clicking here. Next week, I’m looking at another kid’s one, one of my absolute favorite films as a kid… First Kid.
Agree, disagree, or think I got it completely wrong? Say so in the comments or over at the Vortex Effect forums.
