STARSHIP TROOPERS

In STARSHIP TROOPERS, Paul Verhoeven, who has directed such porno-violence as BASIC INSTINCT, SHOWGIRLS and ROBOCOP and who spearheads the blasphemous, anti-Christian Jesus Seminar, combines his lust for violence, sexual affinities and pagan nazi worldview to create a semi-camp, sci-fi thriller that could serve as a commercial for Raid. Regrettably, STARSHIP TROOPERS is not camp enough to be funny, too violent for young teenagers who are its optimum audience, too pornographic for moral Americans, and too pro-Nazi for good drama.

The STARSHIP TROOPERS opens with a television news report showing giant bugs from outer space maiming and mutilating men as a human reporter informs the auience that the Federal Forces are trying to make the universe safe for mankind. In mid-sentence, the reporter is impaled by a bug and blood spurts everywhere as the reporter is summarily torn limb from limb. Eventually, even the camera man is laid low, and this featured news spot becomes a sophisticated Website where the audience can find out more than they ever wanted to know about the war between bugs and men.

A big title on the screen takes the story back one year earlier. Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) and his friends are graduating from high school in Buenos Aires. In civics class, a tough, one-armed teacher is informing the graduating class that true citizenship in the worldwide fascist state only comes when you sign on as a soldier in the Federal Forces. The teacher intones that years ago there was moral chaos around the world so the veterans took over, forming a National Socialist one-world government ruled by the soldier citizens. Now, the earth is being threatened by meteorites thrown at it by bugs from some distant galaxy in space. (Yes, these are incredible bugs.)

Carmen Ibenez (Denise Richards), the girl Johnny loves but who doesn’t love him, is at the top of her class and signs up to pilot a space fighter. Although he is a superb athlete, Johnny’s grades are abysmal so he cannot follow Carmen into pilot training; instead, he joins up with the infantry because of his grades. Dizzy Flores (Dina Meyer), the girl who loves Johnny but whom Johnny doesn’t love, joins the infantry to be with Johnny. Johnny’s best friend, Carl Jenkins (played by Neil Patrick Harris of Doogie Howser fame), is a psychic who joins the intelligence corps which enables him to dress like an SS officer and wear long black leather coats.

In boot camp, Johnny is taught how cruel and mean the world is. He even gets whipped, literally for endangering the life of one of his men. Incredibly, Men and women serve together in this Nazi army and even get to take nude showers together for the benefit of Hear Director Verhoeven’s pornographic fantasies. In the midst of their intense training, Buenos Aires is destroyed by bug-thrown meteors, so they ship out to the outer fringes of the universe to fight the bugs.

What follows is a long tedious semi-camp series of battles with special effects bugs of every size and shape. After several battles on barren planets and in space, the Federal Forces find out that big Brain Bugs are sucking out captured men’s brains so the bugs can outwit the human beings and destroy them. Ignoring plot problems and story development, Federal Forces capture one of the Brain Bugs and appear to triumph in the end.

There are so many problems with this mediocre movie that it may score at the box office, especially with those entertainment masochists who fit P.T. Barnum’s dictum that “A sucker is born every minute.” Pretending that he is mocking 1950’s sci-fi films, Verhoeven has directed this movie with almost no character development: these young men and women are ubermenches at the beginning of the movie and ubermenches at the end. The young citizen soldiers live in a dull, stoic environment, while the bugs live on planets with no vegetation so it is hard to imagine how they can survive unless their food source has always been dimwitted creatures who venture to the bugs’ planets when attracted by bug-tossed meteors. The bugs do not communicate on screen so they have no character. Thus, after the first battle, there is no sense of jeopardy ( after all, who cares about people and bugs without character. Ultimately, the movie becomes intriguing only to viewers who want to see new ways of skewering, impaling and destroying creatures combined with some nudity and dreadful tongue-in-cheek dialogue.

Regrettably, STARSHIP TROOPERS does not have the verve of a 1950’s sci-fi thriller, the ironic humor of MEN IN BLACK or the realistic special effects of STAR WARS. However, the audience at the screening laughed heartily at all the wrong places, so it may have some life in the box office because of misguided people who don’t know before they go.