# Starship Troopers (1997)

### reviewed by
Ralph Beard

    Review: Starship Troopers
    Directed By Paul Verhoeven
    Reviewed by Ralph "Leechboy" Beard

Plot - Bugs threaten Earth. Men kill bugs. Much zaniness ensues Rating ***/12 stars or 7.5 (You decide) Review - Before I start the review I must say this, I saw this with just about the perfect film crowd - Enthusiastic, cheering, sci-fi movie lovers ready to suspend disbelief. This is just what you need to really enjoy Starship Troopers, and I must say I did. I was fully expecting Verhoeven to go all Speilberg and do a serious movie, especially after the mess that was Showgirls. Fat chance, Verhoeven returned back to the genre that got him into the A-list, violent tongue-in-cheek sci-fi. Starship Troopers has all the hallmarks of Verhoeven's previous forays Robocop and Total Recall dumb storyline interjected with sharp barbs directed at the media and government. Based on 1950's thinly veiled anti-communist (Change `Bugs' for `Commies' in the dialogue and you'll see) sci-fi novel by Robert A. Heinlein. Starship Troopers is filled with macho characters spewing forth `Kill em all' style phrases, and, if not for ads, this would have been the cheesiest pro-war flick since Green Berets. ST's best scenes involve the army's Join Up propaganda, hilarious 1-2 minute ads that serve to inform us about the story while sending up the `War is good' theme that engulfs the rest of the film. I enjoyed Starship Troopers immensely, as did six of the seven people I saw it with. The seventh, lets call him `The Fool', was less enthusiastic, and when I asked him what he thought of the flick, it went something like this – `The special effects were better than the cast' True, the cast is not exactly As Good As It Gets; however this isn't exactly Hamlet. This is a big bug movie; all it needs it some good looking people to attack the bugs. It has them, Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyers, Denise Richards, etc. are okay, they didn't annoy me, that's all I ask of them. There were memorable performances however from Michael Ironside as the hard-as-nails team leader, and very surprisingly from Clancy Brown in his first good role since Highlander, as the tough drill instructor (Mind you, there's been a hell of a lot of good parts for drill instructors, eg Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket, Viggo Mortenson in GI Jane, Warren Oates in Stripes and Louis Gosset Jr. in Officer and A Gentlemen). The effects are what make the movie, and they are astounding to look at, the bugs are awesome and the explosion fantastic. There is no doubt in my mind that this would have been a considerably worse movie if Roland Emmerich had directed, Verhoeven gives us what ID4 was distinctly lacking, death. For all the big explosions and aliens, ID4 did not show us the outcome of war, death, Starship Troopers is littered with dead bodies, decapitations and dismemberments. Almost all the cast is impaled or injured in some way, showing us without a doubt that this war is hell. So are there problems with Starship Troopers? Sure, it starts off slowly, I would have deleted all the scenes with Van Dien's parents, some more dramatic sequences don't work and the ending is a bit of a let down but through all of this I just kept remembering that Starship Troopers is a big dumb sci-fi flick. It's thoroughly enjoyable, yes, but I'm not going to be holding my breath for the best script Oscar for it. The point is - I had FUN watching it, something that hasn't happened for me at the movies in a long time.

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