STARSHIP TROOPERS 2 - REVIEW


How do you follow a film like Starship Troopers?

I mean, Paul Verhoeven's sci-fi flick was something of a rare gem. The kind of genial, silly, wonderfully entertaining, crazy project that comes around once every blue moon and proudly shows that a sci-fi creature feature can and should be done right! After RoboCop and Total Recall, who knew that the director had one more ace up his sleeve? Especially after the likes of Basic Instinct and *shudder* Showgirls!

Yes, Starship Troopers was great.

But I'm avoiding reality.

I'm not here to review that movie. I'm here to review its sequel. A sequel so awful it was turned down by Casper Van Dien AND Denise Richards.

:O

At first I was like "Whaaaat? Surely it couldn't be as b..." but soon enough, my friends, soon enough I knew that a bug had crawled up my ass and would not leave my rectum for the next hour and 20 minutes. That bug was Starship Troopers 2.

Man, what a cheap follow-up. From the offset you just know that whatever budget they had for this piece of shit could barely afford you a box of cornflakes. It looks so bad my eyes just wouldn't adapt to its visual crap-factor. Believe it or not, I don't like staring at dark corridors and buzzing lights for hours on end. I really don't. Not to mention actors with the combined charisma of Steve Guttenberg, Bill O'Reilly and Jar Jar Binks.

The acting in this is awkward at best, the story absent, the effects cheesy, the sets claustrophobic (and not in a good way) and the whole thing is a giant waste of time. I was really stunned by how much of a drop the franchise took in one go, it's like if the sequel to Batman had been Batman & Robin: people would have shit their pants! Human sprinklers of ass: that's what we would have been reduced to. And I'm pretty darn close to that right now, I swear to god. I'm so close I can taste it.

What the film tries to be is an Alien-style horror B movie complete with predictable jumps and bland, forgettable characters getting taken down one by one by stupid bugs. Oh and lots of boobs and gore. Yeah, because that's why the original was great, that's why it was so watchable. Or maybe, just maybe it was good because EFFORT was put into it! And some of it took place outside! Remember outside?

Where we breathe?

I like bad movies, I really do. As long as they're so silly they're fun, I can appreciate a good stinker. But this is just taking the piss. Admittedly it would have been near impossible to match the original's ballsy take on the genre, especially with that kind of non-budget but if you have nothing to work with: don't bother! Really: don't.

Overall, this is definitely one to avoid. Check out Starship Troopers if you haven't already but whatever you do: don't even acknowledge this shit-quel. It's just not worth it.

That's one stinky-ass bug you can happily squash and not feel bad about.  

 

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