Subject: Review: Starship Troopers (1997)

From: James Brundage <[email-masked]>
Date: 31 Jan 1999 20:05:48 GMT

Starship Troopers may win the war, but looses the battle.

As Reviewed by James Brundage

Lets take movies from the side that they really are. The side that almost no
one ever sees that isn't in the business. The side that lacks the glamour of
the interest or the entertainment. The side of a bunch of lawyers, CPAs and
rich kids all gathered together to make more money. Its a side that doesn't
really have much to show, that isn't anything more than people in Armani in
a room deciding the entertainment of a nation.

Think of them as car dealers, brokering to you a beat up Pinto that's been
repainted and is going for pretty cheap, and you have a good idea of what
Starship Troopers is like.
Picture the conversation : "What does this movie have to offer you? Its fun,
its sci-fi. The human race fighting for survival, that sorta thing. It has
relationships. Its based on the 1959 classic. Its has something for
everyone."

Okay, you think, the movie sounds okay so far, but what about when he begins
the next bit, talking to you dressed in a cheap suit and a K-Mart tie, arms
spread out in a hug and pot belly accented.

"And, free of extra charge, we've got some goodies for you. It comes with
plenty of violence for all you gore-hounds out there, with a human and alien
body count close to 5,000 shown. And, of course, millions more die behind
the scenes. We torture one scared alien. Like unnecessary nudity? We've got
that too.

"And we've got this wonderful old-fashioned new negative utopia angle for
you to try. You have to serve in the military to be a citizen. We've got a
bug shooting things out of its but. We've got cockroaches being smashed to
little-itty bitty bits for all those city-dwellers. We've got psychics for
all those watches of the Sci-Fi channel. We've got cheap relationships for
you who don't want to get too deep into the movie. But, for those who try to
get deep into the movie, we try (no promises) to give you a nice bit of
humanity with our impossibly drawn-out death scenes (but they're terribly
faked for all you conservative parents). Not a lot of profanity, but, hey,
you can't win them all.

"So, do you want to take it for a spin?"