Starship Troopers

One of my best friends is moving to Kansas in several weeks. I knew he was moving, but I didn't know until last night that he would be traveling a lot in the meantime and might not see each other again until moving day, which he graciously offered me to spend some quality time with him by helping him move (thanks, bud).

I was feeling depressed when I got home and didn't want to go to bed sad. I cycled through the cable channels a few times before seeing that Starship Troopers was on, and decided to watch it for a while.

(See what you drove me to, Sean?)

Some critics liked the movie, but many of them lambasted Starship Troopers as a horrible film. I can see where the critics are coming from. The acting is wooden, the characters one-dimensional, the plot uninventive, and the special events aren't even that well done.

I found though that the movie is more odd than bad. The movie takes place in the future, where people are blissfully unaware that they live in an authoritarian society. A group of presumably high-school students are graduating and deciding which branch of the military to join (although the positions are described using the language of civic responsibility, like calling a soldier a "citizen").

There is a race of alien bugs in a galaxy that the government says has the power to go from planet to planet and hurl asteroids at Earth. When an asteroid hits Buenos Aeries, the planet, whipped into a fury with the help of the media, mobilizes for war against the bugs.

What's odd is that all of the obvious flaws in the movie--the stereotypical characters, hackneyed dialogue and relationships, unsophisticated plot--are deliberate. Even the makeup on the actors seems deliberately over-applied.

But the movie almost never winks at the viewer to say "we're poking fun at something else" or gives much of a hint as to the purpose of using this style. The only easily noticeable nudge to the audience is the periodic news telecasts, done in the style of 1950s American or Soviet propaganda commercials.

I could only watch half of the movie, so I may have missed the point, but I came away thinking that the movie was a propaganda movie about propaganda. It used all the simple tricks and trades employed by propaganda makers of years ago to make fun of the type of society that could create such propaganda.

It's akin to someone parodying poor writing by copying the bad writing instead of writing poorly in a clever way.

I still don't think it is a good movie, because there has to be some distance between what you create and what you are parodying, or you're no longer parodying the subject. You're emulating it. But there is a sort of sophistication behind the movie that makes it more interesting than it appears at first glance.

I can't recommend that people watch it because I gave up on the movie midday through. It's difficult to watch, and I didn't have the sense that the director was moving towards a larger point that would justify the style he chose in making the movie. If I'm wrong, let me know and I'll rent it and finish watching.