Director Paul Verhoeven blends the conflicting elements of intentional camp and perverse sincerity into a single tone—and he doesn’t resort to simple irony.

| Mar 16, 2023

In its early scenes, 'Troopers 'is basically a goofy high school movie, complete with love triangles, a big game, and a school dance (and sex) after. Once they've begun infantry training, the flexing of machismo so over the top, it can only be satire.

| Nov 14, 2017

More effective as a satire than as an action extravaganza.

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 20, 2005

Lacks the courage of the book's fascist conclusions.

| May 29, 2002

Lacking the sophistication of the average comic book, it compensates with panoramic attack sequences, reminiscent of the Japanese swarm attacks in American war movies.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 12, 2002

A jaw-dropping experience, so rigorously one-dimensional and free from even the pretense of intelligence it's hard not to be astonished and even mesmerized by what is on the screen.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 14, 2001

It is pure Verhoeven -- broad, brash and ultraviolent, and all up there on the screen.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 1, 2000

A special effects budget that would shame the Pentagon, cataclysmic violence, high levels of ambient horniness, and total lack of pretense to any goal higher than pure, mindless fun.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 1, 2000

The action sequences are heavily laden with special effects, but curiously joyless.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 1, 2000

The most audacious pop-cultural amalgam since Star Wars.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

Director Paul Verhoeven is back in his subversively nimble RoboCop groove with the uproariously cheeky Starship Troopers.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Maybe the filmmakers are so lost in their slambang visual effects that they don't give a hoot about the movie's scariest implications.

| Jan 1, 2000

May just be the bug movie to end all bug movies.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 1, 2000

As written by Ed Neumeier, who also wrote Verhoeven's much tighter Robocop, Starship Troopers never gets over its 180-degree swivel from teen-age love story to murderous destruction.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 1, 2000

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Manages to be both fun and shocking -- sometimes in the same shot.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 1, 2000

A kick-ass paramilitary teenybop creature-feature spectacular.

| Original Score: B+ | Nov 7, 1997