STARGATE
A film review by Craig Good
Copyright 1994 Craig Good
Let's hear it for the Sun god! He's a real fun god! Ra! Ra! Ra!
Like many others, I ate up the trailers for "Stargate" in anticipation if its release. As soon as it opened, I saw it at one of the biggest theatres in town. The good news is that the movie delivered everything it promised to me in the trailers. It's big, art directed to the hilt, has some stunning effects, and crowd scenes like we haven't seen since, well, DUNE. The bad news is--that's all it delivered.
The story is pretty basic and mindless. That makes it just a little better than most "Star Trek" movies and TV episodes. But that's damning with faint praise. Remember, though, that the trailer never promised a Merchant/Ivory film.
On some levels the movie works quite well. It does a pretty good job at the hand-waving technobabble that is seemingly so necessary in science fiction, and resists the temptation to over-explain the technology. That, coupled with the stunning look, would be enough to convey the impression of a relatively intelligent film were it not for a few glaring stupidities.
The first thing is the "military" mission--led by Kurt Russell--which is accompanied by rogue Egyptologist James Spader on the journey through the stargate. This has to be the most *un*-military bunch of guys I've seen since "F-Troop." Except for packing along some nice guns and remembering to say "over" at the end of most of their radio transmissions, this little pack acts nothing like any group who ever donned a uniform for real, much less the crack Special Forces one would expect to find on this mission.
And, very minor spoiler here, you know things aren't going well in the script department when, because of the medallion he's wearing, Spader is mistaken for a diety by the natives. My, I certainly didn't see *that* one coming.
Also along for the slow, ponderous ride is Jaye Davidson who wears some simply fabulous outfits in his role as Ra, the sun god. Ironically, he looks more feminine in his kingly garb than he ever did in drag in THE CRYING GAME. He doesn't get to do much more than pose, though, and his voice is replaced with a heavily processed growl that is at times hard to understand.
There's an audience for STARGATE: people who, like me, catch it on a matinee and with low expectations, or kids who are still enjoying the "gee whiz" stage of life. That audience is likely too small for it to recoup the rumored $55 million budget, and I'm only sorry that they didn't pare it down to $54 million to have some more money to spend on the script.
--Craig
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