"I'd Buy THAT For A Dollar!"

I picked up the special edition of The Mad Dutchmen’s teen heartthrobs in fascist futuristic warfare pic, Starship Troopers, this weekend, and I have to say, a better six dollars has rarely been spent. Along with the first two Blade films, and Verhoeven’s other cheesy sci-fi gut busters Total Recall and Robocop, it’s one of—maybe my favorite—truly trashy movies. I mean, really, there’s just no way to excuse the film on any level. The effects are above par, I suppose, but the action scenes themselves are (purposely, I suspect) limp and melodramatic. As with all of Verhoeven’s sci-fi flicks, the set design is plasticky, almost toy-like; it always looks like an underbuilt studio backlot. The acting makes most daily soap stars look like Altman-film Oscar winners. So what gives? Maybe it’s just the sheer lunacy of it. Maybe (probably) I’m just a sucker for space marines and swarms of killer aliens. Maybe I’ve got some rare susceptibility to anything that is pure, vapid irony. Or maybe—and this is as close to an actual argument for the film as I’ll likely ever come—Verhoeven manages, somehow, to capture that unadulterated, utterly mad big movie energy that a relatively mainstream cinemaniac like myself is helpless to resist.