VIDEO PICK OF THE WEEK #5
by Gerry Wang

STARSHIP TROOPERS
(Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, Neil Patrick Harris, directed by Paul Verhoeven)

_____I must apologize for my one week self-imposed vacation. I had midterms and papers and all that other college crap. So, to make up for it, I will write an excellent Video Pick of the Week #5. I know how you all love my horrible grammar and mistake-filled mechanics. I bet you're wondering, How the hell did that ESL student get into UCLA...... Don't worry, I wonder the same thing.

_____This week, my VPOTW is STARSHIP TROOPERS, a satirical sci-fi war movie starring Casper Van Dien (TARZAN AND THE LOST CITY), Dina Meyer (DRAGONHEART), superhot babe Denise Richards (WILD THINGS), and that fag-lookin' Neil Patrick Harris (DOOGIE HOWSER). It was directed by Paul Verhoeven, who also directed some of my favorite movies such as BASIC INSTINCT and SHOWGIRLS, which was unfairly ripped by critics.

_____Van Dien plays the main character Rico, a young ideological teen attending high school in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Meyer plays Dizzy, who likes Rico, but unfortunately he's with Carmen, played by the babealicious Denise Richards. Doogie Howser plays Karl or some fruity name. I forgot because he wasn't in it that much.

_____Well, back to the story, the trio (sans Karl, because he's lame) has just graduated HS and are now considering their future endeavors. Dizzy's gonna go play football, and Carmen joins the Air Force. Rico follows his love and enlists in the Mobile Infantry. You know, the grunts on the front line. He ain't all that bright, so MI is all he could get.

_____I was working in the Convention Center a couple years ago while STARSHIP TROOPERS was being filmed. So it was cool watching them use the Convention Center as a sorry excuse for a futuristic setting. It somehow made me conscious of the setting, and it distracted me. Darn it. Heh heh.

_____To summarize the plot w/o giving too much away, Earth is in conflict with a galaxy of planets inhabited by huge arachnids that insist on throwing meteors at Earth. So Earth decides to send troops to exterminate the huge bugs. Of course, the huge bugs aren't the easy push-overs the Earthlings thought they would be. The rest is a bloodbath as soliders are mutilated and mangled, bugs are shot to bits and blown into kingdom come. Take a wild guess at the end. Hmmm, do the humans (good guys) win? Or do the bugs (bad guys) win? Gee, Watson, I do be stumped. But the plot is meaningless to this movie. This movie rocks because of the sheer ambition it displays.

_____Throughout the movie there are satires of old fashioned World War II propoganda. You know, like "Everybody! Help Uncle Sam and do your part to help win the war!" And then you see little kids stomping on cockroaches. Hilarious! It made me appreciate this movie as an anti-war message. The ultra-violence and bloody deaths of the war the scenes shock you on a level similar to SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. I remember watching the movie, and going "Holy mother of god, I would be shittin' bricks if I was in a war. War sucks! All these young people dying painful deaths."

_____The special effects are top notch in STARSHIP TROOPERS. There are more CGI shots than JURASSIC PARK. It holds the record for the most machine gun shells ever fired in a movie. And the arachnids, whoa they are scary sons of bitches. You shoot em and they still go at you. I can honestly say that driving home from the theater, I was scared a bug was going to leap out at me. That's how disturbed I was by STARSHIP TROOPERS. It made me more scared of bugs than I already am.

_____So rent STARSHIP TROOPERS if you want to watch a bloody, limb severing movie. And believe me, when you go to sleep, you'll be dreaming of whole hordes of arachnids storming to your house, and you'll wake up and urinate in your trousers.

***/4
Chick-o-meter: 1 (while there are nude love/shower scenes, girls will not enjoy the ripping to shreds of humans.)