Starship Troopers (1997)

"Entertaining, engaging, exciting...  Christine James, Box Office Magazine
"Terrific entertainment.  Joe Baltake, Sacramento Bee
"The film's special effects are astonishing, but the most notable and unexpected thing is its tone.  Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
"...sensationally exciting...  Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
"A spectacularly gung-ho sci-fi epic that delivers two hours of good, nasty fun.  Todd McCarthy, Variety
"...powerful entertainment that appeals to our most basic instincts.  George Powell, San Francisco Examiner
"This twisted space opera serves up carcasses in six-digit figures but is foremost a sendup for the ages.  Mike Clark, USA Today
"Wall to wall blood 'n' guts laced with surprisingly keen social satire, much of it targeting the fatuousness of media culture.  Russell Smith, Austin Chronicle

Editor's Note Dutch director Paul Verhoeven (TOTAL RECALL, ROBOCOP) mixes big budget bug bashing with twisted satire of old Hollywood movies in this adaptation of Robert Heinlein's classic sci-fi novel. It's the future, Earth is at war, and the kids are all going off to fight giant killer bugs on the remote planet of Klendathu. Casper Van Diem, Denise Richards, Dina Meyer, and Patrick Muldoon play some of the blandly attractive young recruits who engage in soap-opera style love triangles as they toughen up and learn to fight (and die) like soldiers. Michael Ironside is their gung-ho, one-armed leader. The real stars though, are the superbly animated bugs. Packed to the rafters with jaw-dropping special effects and insane violence, the film managed to be a box office hit though it undoubtedly left some audiences confused at Verhoeven's slyly deadpan humor. By the time Neil Patrick Harris (TV's Doogie Howser) starts marching around in a Gestapo-style uniform, for example, it will be apparent this isn't STAR WARS. What it is however, is a rousing experience for mature viewers in the properly ironic frame of mind.

	Casper Van Dien
	Denise Richards
	Dina Meyer
	Jake Busey
	Micheal Ironside
	Neil Patrick Harris
	Patrick Muldoon
	Rue McClanahan
	Alan Marshall - Producer
	Basil Poledouris - Original Music By
	Edward Neumeier - Writer
	Jost Vacano - Cinematographer
	Mark Goldblatt, et. al. - Editor
	Paul Verhoeven - Director
	Robert A. Heinlein - Based On Novel By

"Would you like to know more?"----a slogan that appears frequently in newreel clips

"Violence has resolved more conflicts than anything else. The contrary opinion that violence doesn't solve anything is mearly wishful thinking at its worst!"----Rasczak (Michael Ironside) to his students

"Everyone fights, no one quits. If you don't do your job, I'll shoot you myself."----Rasczak to his troops

"You see a bug hole, you nuke it!"----Rasczak to his troops

"M.I. does the dying. Fleet just does the flying."----Rico (Casper Van Dien) referring to the downside of being in the mobile infantry

Sight and Sound
"...Fascinating....Featuring astonishing effects and some of the most harrowing battle scenes in movie history..." 01/01/1998 p.53-4

USA Today
"...Director Paul Verhoeven is back in his subversively nimble ROBOCOP groove with the uproariously cheeky STARSHIP TROOPERS" -- 4 out of 4 stars 11/07/1997 p.2D

Entertainment Weekly
"...A letter grade would do a disservice to a movie that sees relentless entertainment and brilliant pop-culture fraud as two sides of the same media coin....The Most Ironic Hollywood Blockbuster Ever Made. See it for yourself and decide..." 05/15/1998 pp.104-5

New York Times
"...The film's main events are its wild bugfights, with hordes of extraordinarily dynamic special-effects creatures....These bizarre marauders are really something to see..." 11/07/1997 p.E14

Box Office
"...Entertaining, engaging, exciting....With game, energetic, winsome performances...and effects that live up to the hype..." 01/01/1998 p.47

San Francisco Examiner 9 of 10
Jingoistic politics are not proper or prudent in the pluralistic human society of the 1990s. It's much easier to assuage these baser urges by facing a real nonhuman enemy that just wants to kill you. War is gore. You or them. That message is the real strength of Starship Troopers, although many may find it morally flawed. No matter, this is powerful entertainment that appeals to our most basic instincts. - George Powell

HBO 9 of 10
...the sci-fi movie for those who like their action breathless and their special effects big. "The only good bug is a dead bug" is as about as deep as the philosophical considerations get here, but that's perfectly okay. Troopers has a cartoony sense of humor, a zippy style and plenty of muscle. - Jim Byerley

JackassCritics.com 9 of 10
As someone who doesn't like war, I typically don't like war movies. Most war films look exactly alike to me, especially those that portray World War II. The one war film that I do enjoy, some would argue isn't a war movie at all. But, I feel that Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers is not only a great action film, but one of the best movies ever to illustrate the harsh realities of war. - Mike Long

ReelViews 8 of 10
Probably the best way to approach Starship Troopers is to divorce it from its intelligent and gripping pedigree. Many of the most intellectually stimulating aspects of the book have been stripped away, and those that remain are only shadows of their former selves. (It's still a lot smarter than Independence Day, however.) Viewers offended by the "watering down" of themes in this summer's superlative motion picture version of Contact will be horrified by what has happened here. Nevertheless, taken on its own terms, the movie entity Starship Troopers offers an enjoyable two hours. At its best, the film recaptures the kind of taut, visceral thrills offered by James Cameron's Aliens...Starship Troopers represents director Paul Verhoeven's comeback attempt after the disastrously-received NC-17 cult favorite, Showgirls. This time around, Verhoeven returns to the genre that has been most kind to him. Starship Troopers is his third science fiction endeavor, following in the footsteps of Robocop and Total Recall. And, as was true for both of those films, Verhoeven applies his own unique style to the material. Much of Starship Troopers is presented tongue-in-cheek, and the level of violence and gore (bodies being ripped limb-from-limb and so forth) is so extreme that viewers will quickly become desensitized to it. - James Berardinelli

Reel.com 10 of 10
Starship Troopers might be one of the most brilliant science fiction movies ever made -- and it's definitely one of the most misunderstood. On the surface, it's a crowd-pleasing tale of a group of clean-scrubbed youths who join tomorrow's space-faring armed forces to fight a race of giant arachnids. But when the special-effects-packed epic was released in 1997, it was pilloried by most critics. Many pooh-poohed director Paul Verhoeven for laying on the gore with a trowel. Others scoffed at the Beverly Hills, 90210-worthy romance between cheesecake pin-up Denise Richards and Teen Beat cover-boy Casper Van Dien. But most reviewers were horrified at Verhoeven's brazen use of fascist imagery, dressing up his fresh-faced stars in Nazi-inspired uniforms and spurring them into battle with propaganda clips straight out of Triumph of the Will...What those critics -- and the public -- didn't understand, was that that was the whole point. When Robert Heinlein wrote the novel Starship Troopers in 1959, he intended it as a sincere argument that democracy was doomed, and that some sort of enlightened authoritarianism was humanity's only hope. Although a fan of the book, screenwriter Ed Neumeier thought Heinlein's vision was ridiculous. But rather than condemn it outright, he decided to satirize it from within. - Tor Thorsen