capsule : where are you tonight , leni rienfenstal ? starship troopers is an <NEG> expensive , hateful and unenjoyable </NEG> piece of violent pornography -- and <NEG> bad pornography </NEG> , at that . <NEG> it is not good cinema , not good storytelling , and not even stupid fun </NEG> : it's so cynically , calculatedly <NEG> bone-headed </NEG> that even the least demanding members of the audience i was with were alternately <NEG> bored and revulsed </NEG> . it's <NEG> one of the worst movies </NEG> i've seen in a long time . why am i calling this movie pornography ? pornography , in the abstract , is anything which is calculated to appeal to the baser instincts . i remember reading a review of full metal jacket which described the climact moment at the end of the movie , where private joker has to shoot the downed vc sniper , as " a near-pornographic eternity " . i didn't agree with that assessment , but i could see what was being implied : the reviewer felt as if the audience was being incited to stand up and pump their fists and shout " do 'er , man , do 'er ! " that sentiment is echoed ad nauseam throughout starship troopers . it's * literally * like a giant recruitment film that <NEG> has gone berserk </NEG> . it tries frantically to enlist our emotions but it winds up only being <NEG> dull or sickening </NEG> . the film takes place in our future , when earth has come under attack by some alien species that doesn't appear to have intelligence . to counterattack , humankind does the single stupidest thing imaginable : instead of nuke the planet from orbit , which they're clearly capable of , they send down grunts with m-16 rifles . this isn't heinlein , it's a bad wwii movie , one where all the most obvious points of satire are ever poked and prodded in combat scenes that are noisy , repetitive , and ultimately tiresome . ( one scene has a journalist on a battlefield , filimg soldiers being slaughtered , and ends with groaning predictability : said cameraman gets skewered , too . ) the soldiers and their commanders are consistently idiotic . they do not possess a germ of tactical intelligence or even common sense . they don't even behave like soldiers in a bad * movie * , and therefore we don't care about them . we hated the tom berenger character in platoon , but he * mattered * , and therefore we were curious to learn about his fate . here , we don't even hate the bugs -- what's there to hate ? hating them would be like cursing a hurricaine . if there's anything really hateful there , the movie doesn't know how to give it to us . the screenwriter ( ed neumeier -- perhaps a better appelation would be " screen typist " ) and director ( the <NEG> increasingly talent-impaired </NEG> paul verhoeven ) <NEG> have not found any way </NEG> to make the characters or the story serve each other . one of the subplots concerns a woman pilot who's great at getting out of tight situations , and does it again and again and again . once or twice is fine . by the fifth or sixth time , it's worn out its welcome . there's never any sense that these people are really thinking their way out of anything , or really being tested to show their mettle . also , the movie is <NEG> irritatingly selective </NEG> with how effective the bugs are to earthling weaponry . if a bug has one of the humans screaming in its grasp , then five guys can stand around it and blast away on full auto without doing a damned thing . but if one human gets cornered , he lays waste to whole platoons of bugs with one clip . <NEG> uh-huh </NEG> . <NEG> the very worst feature </NEG> of the movie is its <NEG> repulsive quasi-fascist flavor </NEG> . i say " quasi- " because while the movie uses many of the trappings of fascism ot eroticize its action -- the gear , the uniforms , etc . -- the movie doesn't have the nerve ( or the brains ) to be genuinely fascist , or intelligent about the subject . the bumpers between scenes , which are apparently intended to parody wartime recruitment propaganda are propaganda -- just <NEG> so clumsy and oafish </NEG> that they wind up making the bugs look relatively innocuous in comparison . like the rest of the movie . there's more , i suppose , but it's not worth it . <NEG> the acting is bland </NEG> , neither arsenic nor gravy ; <NEG> the music disposable </NEG> ; the camerawork <NEG> turgid </NEG> . the heartbreaking thing is that it makes independence day look like a masterpiece .
