Dreadfully Boring

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

What a movie! I knew I'd like this film, being a fan of science-fiction action movies (ie Terminator, Aliens, StarGate, to name a few). While it does show military action in space and fighting alien bugs, I didn't read the book until later. I don't remember too much of the book but this was a fun ride. It's easily one of those love it or hate it films, much like Independence Day, but it did its job. Some of my favorites of the bugs included the warrior bugs and the tanker bugs. You'll see what I mean when you watch it. It's pure propaganda but it's fun propaganda!

Paul Verhoevan's Starship troopers is a fantastic dark comedy masquerading as a cheesy science fiction movie. It is tragic that no one- not the critics or the audience gave this film a chance because the underlying theme is deep and worth debating. Much like all of Verhoevn's films this one contains everything from nudity (both male and female) and extreme gore and violence. Time will probably be more considerate to this movie as it is nowhere as bad as its ratings or box office performance imply. (Rico and space bugs are a treat for those who like layered satire)

Movie Review: "Starship Troopers" (1997)Trademark director Paul Verhoeven delivers an exceptional Science-Fiction action movie that in retrospective has nothing lost even gained in motion picture entertainment factors in a noted 20th anniversary since release. The perfectly prepared 20-something cast plays up under Verhoeven's direction, creating a blueprint of a positive-thinking future generation even in extremest of situations, where female and male become unisex and equals in ever sense of free-loving and engaging sexuality, educational advancements, social status, psychological advantages and further career opportunities.The pace of the two hour 100 Million Dollar production, financed and distributed by TriStar and Touchstone Pictures respectively, could not be better due to cinematography by Jost Vacano, who shifts is cinematic eye from three- to two-shots into character close-ups, marking a real benefit in coverage for editor Mark Goldblatt. Furthermore the live-action shots, shot at Sony Picture Studios in Culver City, California combined with much more realistic-conceived miniature works of spaceships plus Computer-Generated-Imagery (CGI) enhancements as production design by Allen Cameron come to an action highlight of the 1990s at an desert fortress exterior location with beyond belief accelerated mass effects of charging alien bugs onto a constant true-staying starship trooper platoon, where each and every one has the others back, including machine gun magazine switches as well as fast-decision made mercy killings, in a science-fiction war scenario of a rarely seen honest representation of violence, blood-letting, glory and guts spreading velocity.If this would not be enough to enjoy this science-fiction movie, additionally gets the picture infused with Internet-forecasting newsreel interludes, where satire of constant 4th wall breaking moderators report on a menacing interstellar bug plague, hitting the spectator's attention, raising eyebrows, even a laugh in certain moments, when a ten-year-old blonde boy in full body armor and machine gun in his hand states that he wants to do his part for humanity's balanced peace-keeping as well.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

It's not clear just exactly what Paul Verhoeeven and the writer Edward Neumeier were trying to do with this movie. I gather Heinlein's novel was pretty thoroughly tinkered with. The movie begins as a mediocre satire of war-time training camp movies. There's the loud and demanding drill sergeant, stern but fair. There are two high school football players vying for the same young girl. There is the less glamorous girl whose love for the handsome hero, Casper Van Dien, may be hopeless but resolute. There are brotherly insults in boot camp. Plenty of grabass in the shower, which is gender inclusive, a nice touch missing from my own boot camp. There's the rich kid who's about to drop out and take a walk down Washout Alley before a girl restores his faith in himself.Someone mentioned the actors' teeth, as well they should. What teeth! Incandescent! Brighter than a tooth whitener commercial, they'd light up a room if the fuse blew. And the principles are impossibly perfect, as if they'd just stepped out of a cartoon. Denise Richards, in particular, has this cygnette neck atop which sits a face full of good bone structure and a pair of lips so plush and prominent that they seem to have been photoshopped from somebody else. That Richards shows no evidence of having any acting talent is almost beside the point.It's not very funny. Not really. But it's identifiably a send up of a training camp movie to anyone familiar with the genre. That's not at all true for the remaining two thirds of the movie, which is treated as a serious science fiction film about our men and women in action against a planet ruled by "bugs", by "arachnids", according to dialog, though the images we see aren't arachnids at all but various forms of arthropods ranging from cockroaches to, well, other things, all of them creepy and mostly deft and speedy. They've destroyed Buenos Aires and "the Federation" has launched a war of retaliation against them. They far outnumber our men and women in uniform (all of them American) and our weapons are of little use against them. Full of martial pride, we attack them nonetheless -- and get clobbered.Some of the dialog is ripped off from World War II movies like "Sands of Iwo Jima." "Saddle up!" "Do you want to live forever?" "The only good bug is a dead bug." (Well, that's been attributed to a Civil War general but you get the point.) Some of the scenes are familiar too. The glorious last stand. The hordes of Indians, I mean bugs, charging the lone fort, mowed down in droves, only to be replaced by a million more. The sacrifice of the side kick. The last words being gasped from the bleeding mouth.Yet by this time the movie has turned deadly serious. There's nothing funny about soldiers being torn in half and flung into the air while still howling, or about a battleground with a hundred human body parts lying around in swatches of blood. It's frankly thrilling. You really WANT our troops to win, even if the war itself is stupid.So, what to make of it? Let's put it this way. Pre-teen minds (and some older) will enjoy it all the way through. More mature minds may have to put it on pause halfway through and think for a minute.