Starship Troopers

BOY, IF YOU THOUGHT last year's blockbuster Independence Day was the ultimate redneck rampage, you ain't seen nothing yet! Imagine ID4 with its complex plot stripped away and its subtle xenophobic undercurrent elevated to a roaring torrent. I suppose the comic-book 'newscast' inserts are American for irony (personally I'd have put Michael Caine and Jack Hawkins in the 'compound' scene), but any way you slice it this is one sick piece of trash.

'But it's satire', protest the apologists, mostly die-hard Heinlein fans who can't read the movie without seeing the book. But what distinguishes satire from the thing it purports (or is purported) to satirize? Surely a measure of irony or wit is required - just stating that it's satirical doesn't make it so! Of course they may have intended satire, which merely goes to show they ought to have spent less on the aliens and hired some proper writers.

Politics aside, Troopers is, well, B O R I N G ! Nice spaceships and superlative bugs, but we see the entire movie in the first thirty seconds, for God's sake. After that it's just reprise.

SPOILER ALERT...

WE WIN!

Jeez.