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Starship Troopers - the movie - begins “In Media Res”, meaning the film opens during a critical point in the middle of the story, showing us where the characters eventually end up. Then it takes the narrative back to the beginning, where the story really begins. That’s fine, except that for me this technique is almost always a deliberately aggressive attempt to be taken seriously. And it almost always comes across as either pretentious, silly, or unnecessary. In this case, it’s simply unnecessary. Starship Troopers isn’t Oscar bait; this movie is a sarcastic parody in the tradition of RoboCop. It’s a gory, big budget political rant by the guy who brought you Basic Instinct. Yes, it’s just a movie. But if a film sets out to make a serious point and just makes you roll your eyes and chuckle, are you likely to ever absorb that point? Part of the joke is how stupid the humans are, despite their supposed intellectual superiority to the Bugs. They indiscriminately throw wave after wave of infantry straight into the enemy, armed with laughably underpowered weapons and practically useless body armor. It doesn’t occur to anyone to attack a giant colony of crawling insects from the air until about halfway through the film. Nobody thinks to use artillery until the second act. It takes them 129 minutes to reacquaint themselves with five thousand years of military strategy.

Ha-ha. It gets old fast. Starship Troopers clearly wants you to buy into a political message, but the hook is this kind of idiotic parody. Supposedly, we’re supposed to be learning that modern society’s desensitization to war is a form of self imposed fascism. There may in fact be something to that but sadly, this film doesn’t possess enough structure to bear that kind of weight. For a send up to effectively deliver a stern message, it needs to take its audience more seriously than this movie does. Attempting to educate someone you clearly don’t respect tends to look suspiciously self serving and that tends to be the case here. Even from a superficial level, this is disappointing. The CGI deployed in this movie is outstanding for the time, and in my opinion it really holds up well. what could have been some truly incredible action sequences were reduced almost to pantomime by repeatedly lazy attempts at irony.

But my strongest complaint would be the same one I levied against RoboCop. This movie is far, far too graphically violent. I realize that the aim was to shock the viewer with reality, but it’s so poorly executed that it just comes across as vulgar and excessive. So, I can’t stress this enough - watch this as a straight comedy and try not to let the blood and guts bother you. It’s all just a big, stupid joke. Come on, Casper Van Dien as an action hero? Should I assume the second most boring tween of 1997 (Chris O’Donnell) was too busy ruining Batman to take this one? We’ve also got the same sort of simulated TV newsbreaks we saw in RoboCop woven into the story, only this time they’re played off as puffed up Government propaganda. And most of them are genuinely hilarious. There’s the great Michael Ironside playing The Great Michael Ironside, like he always does. The Worst Bond Girl Ever - Denise Richards - is on board, taking the wind out of every scene she’s in, the way few female leads can. Neil Patrick Harris plays Barney from How I Met Your Mother, if Barney lived in the future and dressed like Hermann Goring. I’m telling you - there is no reason whatsoever to take Starship Troopers seriously.

Taken solely as mindlessly amusing pabulum, Starship Troopers is really hard to hate. That is, unless you simply can’t stand the sight of blood. Stay miles away if that’s the case. And if you insist on comparing this film to the book whose name it borrows, you’re not just going to be disappointed. You’re going to be downright insane with anger. I don’t like to check my brain at the door any more than most of you probably do, but for me a Verhoeven flick is like eating an entire large pizza by yourself the day after getting dumped by your girlfriend. It’s definitely not good for you. It might even be downright self destructive. But a little indulgence now and then is a big part of keeping a smile on your face, and it just feels so damn good. So go ahead. Try not to laugh at Starship Troopers. Like I said, it’s Dawson’s Creek in space. With bugs. And fascists. How can you not have a good time with THAT?

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