Folks prepare for Starship Troopers!!! It's gonna come boiling over your buttocks like a steamroller. The world had a test screening Thursday night in Sacramento, the night my computer's ISP went down. Typical! I could read the reviews pouring in good old fashion UNIX SHELL type, but couldn't upload them or put them in HTML. Why? Cause I'm a rank amateur at that UNIX SHELL format. But I had to sit here scanning through them, not able to bring them to you. Twas agony. I even talked to Jon Davison, the producer of Starship Troopers about it and shared the results orally. Now that everything seems to be running at full speed. I received 13 reviews (not a lucky number) and one of them also appeared on Dark Horizons. All 13 were excited, drooling reviews, so I decided to pick two of the less drool covered reviews. Remember these two liked it least....
First from Sony's own man in black, "J":
Just another message confirming just how awesome "Starship Troopers" is. I was very fortunate to attend the Sacramento screening and could not believe the amazing amount of skin-raising effects and action sequences. This film a few times inspired that "DAMN THAT IS TOO COOL!" reaction that has been absent from most of the summer box office. The arachnid assaults throughout the film are relentless, gory and jaw- dropping. The sequence where the Starship Troopers are duped by the bugs when the bugs spray plasma spores into space, causing ships to ram into each other or disintegrate, is a work of art!! And the shot where we see thousands of arachnids descending upon the Troopers' compound on Planet "P" in ONE SINGLE CAMERA PULL-BACK is worth the ticket price alone.
This is also the film that is going to make Michael Ironsides' career. The audience was so into his character-a no-nonense, all-guts commander - that his lines were cheered repeatedly. Verhoeven also scored by hiring Clancy Brown, amazing as a drill sergeant. The weakest part of the film were most of the young performers, but this ain't a thespian drama. It's one hell of a flick that's going to give ALIEN RESURRECTION a major fight at the box office!!
Then from the unknown "TROOPER X":
I was fortunate to obtain free passes to Thursday's showing of Starship Troopers for myself and five of my friends, all of which are sci-fi nuts, and most have read the book (I, however, have not). We had read positive rumors on AICN for the past several months, had seen the new, impressive looking trailer in theaters, and were looking forward to seeing the whole thing.
Two words: IT ROCKED! A most entertaining experience, indeed. Simply an orgy of violence and special effects that gave the audience (myself included) exactly what they wanted.
THE PLOT (I'll try not to spoil too much):
The first part of the movie was like an episode of Beverly Hills 90210, with all the petty jealousies and cheesy dialogue to go with it. While many would simply consider this the weak part of the movie, I think Verhoeven intentionally made the beginning a 90210 episode just so that he could pluck the characters from their cozy, superficial world, and drop them onto hellish worlds crawling with giant insects. I waited patiently for the good stuff.
Things got better when they went to training camp. No real action yet, but things were getting interesting, and the dialogue was getting better. The drill sergeant was funny. It kept my interest.
Then the soundtrack kicked in, and we knew the action had arrived in force. There's enough action and special effects in this movie for you to stick all the space footage into one movie, call it "Starship", all the ground combat into a second movie called "Troopers", and each would make $150 million. The audience was suddenly drawn in to the action, and was as nervous as the characters as the drop ships plummeted through the atmosphere, dodging flak from the surface. VerHoeven piled on the works: capital ships exploding, machine guns firing, bugs slicing off limbs, nukes going off, marines getting decapitated, cities wiped out. The audience was horrified. Not by the violence (they wanted that), or the gore (bring it on!), but by how devastatingly lethal the bugs were. Verhoeven's bugs had struck FEAR in the audience, and in today's age of slasher movies and over the top villains, that's saying something. The only good bug was a dead bug from then on. In a scene that followed, where the bugs had a bad day, the audience cheered with enthusiastic emotion I haven't seen since I was a kid sitting in a theater and this thing called an AT-AT got it's legs tied up by a rebel speeder.
I've heard several people wish for a movie that had the action of a trailer the whole movie. Well, once the 90210 stuff was over, this movie blew it's own trailer away. This movie wasn't content to simply rip off Aliens, either. Aliens had two good, definite battles with aliens, and I felt like a kid who'd got two pieces of candy from his neighbors while trick-or-treating, and liked them, but wished they had more. Starship Troopers was like the neighbor who gave you a whole bag of candy, and when you asked for more, gave you five more bags. I felt pleasantly stuffed after the movie.
THE CHARACTERS:
Michael Ironside, as Lt. Jean Rasczak, gave an outstanding, if somewhat typecast, performance. I can't think of a single bad scene with him in it, nor a single bad line he delivered. He was great from start to finish.
Casper Van Dien played Johnny Rico, and played him surprisingly well. I didn't want to like him early on, and I think the audience was skeptical as well, but the truth is he carried the part just fine.
Denise Richards played Carmen Ibenez, and was a disaster. She had it all, on paper, but the audience hated her. This in spite of her beautiful face and damn fine body. Verhoeven seemed to think she should be likeable, but through a combination of poor acting and terrible lines she flopped completely. He should have taken a page from the Robotech/Macross love triangle, and made her a Minmei character -- good, innocent, and sweet on the surface, but the girl you actually end up rooting against because she's so ditzy. What a mess.
(HARRY NOTE: When I read the script, I got the idea I wasn't suppose to like this character really)
Dina Meyer played Dizzy Flores, the competitor to Carmen in the love triangle. Made out as the villain in the beginning, written off by the audience, only to come back in favor through better acting and some very funny scenes. I liked her.
Neil Patrick Harris played Carl Jenkins, a friend of Johnny and Carmen. They dressed him like an SS officer later in the movie, and the audience seemed to see it only as a cheesy label of him being a bad guy, as opposed to being in a position of power in a semi-fascist state as I think Verhoeven intended. There can be fine lines in symbolism, and I think he tripped on that one. There were several speeches by Howser... uh, Harris, that were poorly delivered. Right idea, poor execution.
Patrick Muldoon played Xander Barcalow, the weasel trying to move in on Carmen. Why does Hollywood always have to paint these guys to such extremes? This guy talked like a weasel, had hair like a weasel, had makeup like a weasel, even had clothes like a weasel. Rather than put a weasel sign on these characters, why not make them somewhat normal, let slip their capacity for weasel-ness, and if the audience likes Johnny, they'll hate the weasel on their own without further prodding, just because they're being jealous in Johnny's place.
(HARRY NOTE: Some Weasels in the world look exactly like what they are. Just as some geeks look like geeks, while others, like me, look like the stud muffins we are, managing to hide within our stud muffin exteriors)
Clancy Brown played Sergeant Zim, who trained Johnny and Dizzy at boot camp. He played the comic ultra-drill sergeant quite well, although I was surprised they didn't get the guy from Full Metal Jacket, who seems to get lifetime employment playing drill-sergeants.
The acting and dialogue could have been better at times, but the movie kicked ass where it counted.
