STARGATE
A film review by Ted Prigge
Copyright 1997 Ted Prigge
Director: Roland Emmerich Writer: Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich Starring: James Spader, Kurt Russel, Jaye Davidon, French Stewart
To put it bluntly, Ed Wood would have been proud of this. A totally ridiculous plot is encompassed with bad humor, hokey drama, zero logic and a crap screenplay. Also, a beautifully anti-climactic ending. Not to say it didn't look intriguing when I saw the previews. So much for truth in advertising.
Roland Emmerich, who's later "Independence Day" would look like "The 400 Blows" compared to this, co-writed and directed this inane sci-fi film which uses the cliche of there being some connection between Eqypt and aliens. In a useless opening sequence, men find a stone in 1914 with hieroglyphics on it. It wouldn't be till present day ('94) till they would actually figure it out. They're decipherer? A slightly-neurotic scientist (nice twist), Dr. Dan Jackson (James Spader, doing his best outside of erotic thrillers and some indy fare) who's life sucks so much that people walk out of his lectures after the third word. Why do they use him to decipher what no one else could? So there is a hokey ending! Duh!
He figures it out in about a minute. Yea. And then they get a suicidal colonel or something, "Jack" O'Neill (Kurt Russel, with his Wyat Earp locks in the beginning then a flat-top that would make Howie Long snap into a fetal position). Why a suicidal colonel? For the ending! You'll get the hang of this. They open the stargate, a bunch of them go through it with a bomb to blow it up if they find anything bad. After an overdone special effects thing, they're...inside a goddam pyramid. So they went to Egypt, right? Wrong. They're on another planet that was filmed in Egypt.
They discover a cilvilization ruled by Ra, the sun god (the androginous Jaye Davidson, with a voice modifier to make him sound like Barry White with asthma), and there are fights, explosions and a kiss between two people. Yea. Also melodrama, stupidity, hokey scenes and a bizarre language. An anti-climactic ending ends with stupid lines ("Say hello to King Tut, asswhole!" - the quintessential line, lemme tell ya) and some convenient pesudo-pseudo-pseudo-character development. By the end, you just wanna go home and watch, I don't know, the "Outer Limits" or something.
The script's terrible. The special effects are okay, but nothing great. The story's so weak that it's almost opaque. The whole experience just isn't worth it unless you're so bored that you'd consider watching a "Full House" marathon...or this. I'd pick this, obviously, but still, it's just not fun at all. And I can't wait for it to premier on MST3K.
MY RATING (out of 5): *1/2
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