How a gory, cliche filled, fascist dream can be so entertaining is beyond me, but entertaining it is... This sci-fi romp is HIGHLY underrated. Highly entertaining and actually thought-provoking in its own way, Starship Troopers delivers a couple of hours of entertainment you'll not soon forget. The script is loosely based on a book by renowned, sometimes controversial, sci-fi author Robert A. Heinlein, but deviates a lot from the book. If you have read it, you might be disappointed, but I doubt it... Recommended to anyone with even the slightest interest in sci-fi.

Boy I expected more out of this given its reputation. It's too long. It takes forever to get to the good stuff. It has the older guy who dated Kelly on SBTB. On the plus side it has Ironside and Clancy Brown. I don't know...its a fun movie but didn't live up to its rep. UPDATE: I'd like to say that I was a real dumdum when I said the above stuff and now have seen the light on Starship Troopers and how it rules. Many thanks to the Action Boyz for helping me realize we got a perfect movie on our hands.

Great movie, from one of the best and most famous directors coming out of the Netherlands: Paul Verhoeven. I enjoyed watching the short promotion clips throughout the movie that depicted an at first sight utopian society, but if you look more closely its more like a fascist regime much like Nazi Germany was in the 1930's and 40's. The difference being that now they have highly advanced weapons and spaceships, and instead of the Allies they fight a coalition of different giant insect races. The differences between race and even man and woman seem to have vanished (co-ed showers!). Maybe because of a new danger where all of humankind had to respond to. Whatever the reason the co-ed shower scene was nice :P. The overall action was very great and the acting of everyone involved was good. The bugs and spaceships looked very good, especially considering that CGI was still in its infancy back in 1997. But i think a lot of it has been made using actual models. As the movie goes further we see that instead of a justified war the men and women are fighting a pointless war while the media at home brainwashes the masses in supporting this war with a thick layer of patriotism. I can't help but see some similarities between this world depicted in the movie and the USA of today.

Starship Troopers feels like a cross between Ender's Game and Dawson's Creek and Full Metal Jacket and Idiocracy and Star Wars and She's All That, which is to say that it feels simultaneously distinctive and unusual while also seeming fairly familiar and unoriginal. But it's a generally fun ride. The characters are all only skin-deep, with stock characteristics and standard-issue problems to go along with their standard-issue personalities. The film, however, doesn't take itself too seriously, revelling in the cheesiness of its story and those carrying it along. That self-awareness, the way it steers into the skid of its own shallowness, makes it camp instead of kitsch and renders the whole exercise a lot more enjoyable. The visual elements of the film are its greatest success. There's a comic book feel to the film, with bright, sharp colors, whether its neon alien goo or candy-toned spaceship interiors, that make the setup feel unreal enough that the audience doesn't have to take it seriously. Again, it's a bit cornball, but there's a distinct and coherent feel to every setting, from the toystore playset that is Rico's basic training campus, to the G.I. Joe battlefield look of the alien planet. The costumes, the spaceships, and even the bugs (with effects that hold up fairly well considering the film's nearly 20 years old) all work together to convey a lighter tone for an intergalactic war film. That said, the various battle scenes in the last third of the film get very monotonous very quickly, and the film has its greatest success when its moving its slight and predictable plot forward than when it's pausing to show the excitement/horrors of war. The acting isn't much to speak of, though Denise Richards has a certain charm to her, Dina Meyer has a rough-around-the-edges quality that makes her character endearing, and Clancy Brown's drill sergeant is a trope character that the actor nevertheless breaths life into. Add in some interesting creature design and practical effects, and Starship Troopers becomes an entertaining, if fairly empty, theme park ride of a film. The satire, especially in the little propaganda videos that permeate the film, do add a fun twist, and in some ways, Starship Troopers feels as much like a parody of both war films and sci-fi films as it does playing them straight, but I hesitate to give it too much credit on that from Verhoeven keeps it light for the most part, despite the blood and guts, and it lets a fairly insubstantial movie succeed on its own, cotton candy terms.

Sadly so brilliantly satirical that some took it as fascist, too subtle for its own good. The horrible sequels are MUCH more blatant to appease the masses and are thus far inferior in just about every way. This is why we can't have nice things. Thankfully I still have this original masterpiece