STARSHIP TROOPERS (1997) A Film Review by Ted Prigge Copyright 1997 Ted Prigge
Director: Paul Verhoeven Writer: Edward Neumeier (based on the novel by Robert A. Heinlein) Starring: Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, Neil Patrick Harris, Patrick Muldoon, Jake Busey, Michael Ironside, Clancy Brown, Seth Gilliam, Marshall Bell, Rue McClanahan
Sure, "Starship Troopers" is no "Star Wars," but it has enough fun-ass gore, cool futuristic satire, and hysterically bad 90210-esque melodrama to keep me interested and satisfied for the full time. I mean, sure it's jam-packed with stupidity, gratuitous nudity, and zero characterization, but it's a sci-fi gorefest, and a fun one at that.
As the trailers have been saying for almost a year, "Starship Troopers" deals with a bunch of futuristic marines who go across the universe to battle a bunch of evil, deadly, giant bugs on their rocky home planet, armed with little but a couple detonators, and machine guns, as well as a couple nukes, just in case. And yes, there's some attempts at creating memorable characters, most who are slaughtered mercilessly by the razor-sharp legged bugs, and yeah, that fails pitifully, but the whole bit with the bugs, which takes up most of the last half of the film, is what we came to see, and the film knows it.
The film brings us a bunch of pretty Spelling-ites...and Neil Patrick Harris (who's the biggest name in the no-name cast), who interact with one another during the film. The protagonist is Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien), who is dating the hot Carmen (Denise Richards), who is crazy over him, but soon falls for the hunky Zander (Patrick Muldoon, from "Melrose Place"), who are both going to be pilots in the army. Of course, she still loves Johnny, but she can never see him, even if he joins the army to be sorta near her. Soon Johnny finds that the chick from high school who had a crush on him, Diz (Dina Meyer), looks more attractive than she used to.
This all takes place in the far future, a fascist world of pure high tech-ness, where we hear about televised executions, public beatings, and about obtaining citizenship. The film presents some of it in the fashion of a Riefenstahl-esque bit of propoganda that goes on throughout the film, showing people working hard, and glorifying the deadly marines, even when they're being torn limb by limb by the bugs. This satire is one of the saving graces of the film.
For the first hour, we get the aforementioned melodrama, as well as the whole spiel of boot camp, where the drill sergeant (Clancy Brown, who obviosuly took notes from R. Lee Ermey about how to act like one) trains them in horribly nasty training, sometimes even wounding them (he breaks a guy's arm, and throws a dagger into another's hand). These aren't great, but they're cool to watch.
The big part which we were all waiting for comes at about the halfway part, and is hardly disappointing. The first time we see the bugs is cool, and we are predictably slaughtered mercilessly by them, as it takes about 5 guys shooting them for about a minute to take just one down. And yes, we use machine guns on them instead of just nuking the shit out of them, although we do that once, only killing the ones on the surface, since they live underground.
Oh, and I suppose you're all wondering where Mr. Doogie Howser M.D. himself is included here? Well, Neil plays none other than a psychic scientist/classmate of Johnny, Carmen, and Diz, who basically becomes a big power in the army. Yeah, I know, it's stupid, but it's so weird that it's campy. Oh, and look for ex-"Golden Girl" Rue McClanahan as a biology teacher.
There's not a lot of humanity in the characters, and even scenes where a well-known character is killed isn't as moving as it should be. Sure when one of the four leads was killed, I was moved, but most people are just sent to war just to get killed, which kind of works as satire in a way, I suppose.
The real star of the film is the special effects, which are brilliant, man. Of course, this is from Paul Verhoeven, who is a genius with special effects that look realistic ("Total Recall" won an Oscar for them), and the ones in this look absolutely realistic. The bugs interact perfectly with the actors on the screen, creating a sense of realism. They become scarier just because they look so realistic, and when they attack a human, it looks just as realistic. My personal favorite use of this is when the giant base is surrounded by a literal sea of bugs.
The charm of "Starship Troopers" is that it's just plain fun and it knows it. Director Paul Verhoeven is just trying to bring an entertaining piece of brain candy to the big screen, complete with hundreds of little guilty pleasures. I mean, the shower sequence where we men and women bathing together is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. And the huge amount of gore (people being chomped in half, appendages laying around everywhere, etc, etc, etc) is just awesome. And how he pays homages to everything from Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" to his earlier "Total Recall" is awesome (Verhoeven staple Michael Ironside plays a one-armed general or sergeant or something, and he lost both his arms in "Total Recall").
There's a kind of campy fun to watching all these Spelling-ites sent to a far and away place to be slaughtered that satisfies something in ourselves. And even while "Starship Troopers" might be about as dumb as Forrest Gump himself, or not even follow the novel very well (I never read it anyway), it's still a bitching time at the movies.
MY RATING (out of 4): ***
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