THE STORY: Before I even start on this movie I just want to say that yes, it is a stupid movie. Its one of those stupid movies that made it because it was violent, had good special effects and nudity. Other than that its a pretty silly movie. The characters are at once kind of phoney and wooden. But I was amazed at one thing...there's a Saturday morning cartoon about this movie! I could barely believe it! I can see how the premise of the cartoon would draw kids in...but why this movie? I wouldn't let my kid watch it, if I had kids. Anyway....

The main characters in this movie, Johnny Rico, Carmen, Doogie Howser (well, the guy that played Doogie Howser on TV), and Dizzy Flores are all in High School in some futuristic, fascist-like earth. and earth is at war with aliens called "bugs". In this future one can only become a citizen by enlisting for a term of military service. I fail to see the value of citizenship, though....Rico's parents aren't citizens and they're pretty rich. What does citizenship give you? The right to vote? Well, yeah, that's important but in this world the price for that right is almost certain [unwrite]ing death. I'd rather be a live rich guy that can't vote than a dead citizen...because if you're dead you ain't votin' anyway. This bit of logic escapes Rico because he signs up for the Mobile Infantry solely because Carmen, his girlfriend, is going to military flight school. Unfortunately for Rico he's not intelligent enough to make it into flight school so he ends up going into the Infantry. Dummy. Rico's parents are against this decision, but he goes anyway.

Now, this movie is based off of the book of the same name by Robert Heinlein. I haven't read the book for years and it doesn't matter too much because the movie is nothing like it. The one thing I do remember clearly is that in the book recruit Breckenridge is killed during some kind of mountain climbing training exercise. In the movie he's killed on a live fire range. A really stupid live fire range. Anyone who has seen this movie knows what I mean…lets be honest, folks…what kind of bonehead boot camp would even send recruit trainees on a live fire exercise with live ammo in close formation like that and not expect one of them to get his head blown off? Y'know, even today in our armed forces we use MILES gear in those kind of training exercises so nobody gets killed!

Rico's luck gets pretty bad for awhile. Carmen sends him a "Dear John" letter from her cushy flight school training base….she's been making gooey eyes at "Smarmy Dude" (I didn't write his name down, and really, who freaking cares?) Then the bugs completely destroy Buenos Aires by slamming an asteroid into it. This effectively kills the families of Rico, Dizzy (who is in boot camp with Rico) and Carmen. (However Carmen, who keeps smiling through the entire movie doesn't seem to give a damn.) Now armed with a deep intense hatred of the bugs Rico and the Mobile Infantry are sent to planet Klendathu to wipe them out. Unfortunately, the intelligence-deficient humans go right into a trap set by the bugs. Rico is almost killed, and his unit is decimated. The humans have to retreat and regroup. Rico, Dizzy and his friends are made part of a different unit and sent to attack the bugs on "Planet P"….with similar results.

A play by play of the rest of this movie would be long and useless….lets just say that the Mobile Infantry takes a lot of losses. You see in the future any kind of tactical thinking will be lost. Sun Tzu is rolling in his grave. The rest of the movie I suppose is to show how Rico changes from a confused and easily led young man into a hardened combat veteran and platoon leader. He doesn't actually get any smarter….but he does rise to the rank of Lieutenant, mostly because people get killed at an alarming rate on the battlefield. This movie doesn't seem to have an end either. The big thing is that the humans need to capture a "brain bug" so they can figure out how the bugs think. This feat is accomplished by the recruits former drill instructor, Zim, off camera! What a rip off! Then it’s the end. I can't tell you how royally cheesed I was about this. I mean I devoted two [unwrite]ing hours to this movie?.which is longer than it really deserves?.and there's no real payoff at the end. If anything the whole "We need to capture a brain bug" thing is kind of silly anyway. What do you need a brain bug for? Just nuke the bug planet and be done with it!

With the exceptions of Clancy Brown and Michael Ironsides, I really don't care to see anyone else from this movie act again. Strangely enough, I don't hate this flick but I do admit its really stupid. But it has just enough blood, violence and nudity to make slobs like me actually pay attention to it. Is that a good thing? Uhhhhh…no. But it’s the way it is. This is a science-fiction-guy type movie. The real shame is that it could have been a much better movie. Heinlein's novel is no great work of literature, but it was interesting. Well, this flick didn't follow the book too tightly so they should have gone all the way and wrote a better script. As it stands this is the kind of movie that you're going to hate if you don't like watching people chewed buy CGI monsters.

Best Lines: "MEDIC!"-Sergeant Zim calls for a medic after he breaks a recruits arm and after he throws a knife throw another recruit's hand.

"Its afraid!"-Doogie Howser (Neil Patrick Harris) when the troops capture the "brain-bug".

1.) I learned a lot of things about the future from this movie....dig it:

In the future High Schools will go from grades 9 to 12 to grades 9 to 23. That's why the high school students in this movie were about 25 when they graduated.

In the future some kind of biological plague will wipe out all human life in South America. Colonists from Utah, Nebraska and Oklahoma will repopulate it. We know this because the main characters in this movie were from Buenos Aires....and in the future Buenos Aires is full of  white people! For that matter I don't remember seeing one hispanic person in the entire movie!

In the future men will be able to bathe in a shower with shapely, young, nubile naked woman and not get a woody.

In the future football players will have to be gymnasts.

In the future humans will be able to communicate with ferrets.

In the future if you suck in any class in High School the teacher won't take you aside and tell you that you need to apply yourself. They'll post your crappy math scores on a big ass electric sign so everyone can see how stupid you are.

2.) Speaking of stupid, Rico has got to be one of the dumbest, stupidest, idiotic jackasses that I've ever seen in a movie. Now, his family looks to be well off. He doesn't have to join the Mobile infantry. But he joins because of Carmen. What? Is he nuts!? The fatality rate in the mobile infantry is pretty [unwrite]in' high. Carmen is only his high school sweetheart. Would you join an organization that by default means increasing your chances of a painful, awful death to 95% for your high school sweetheart? Not me, brother. Hey, I'm in the military now, but I signed up for my own reasons. I had a high school sweetheart too, and I can tell you without a doubt there's no way in HELL that I'd sign up like Rico for her.

3.) Tactics in the future are really stupid. Ok, lets look at this...the Earth Forces go to Klendathu to wipe out the bugs. they arrive in Big freakin' starships and stay in an easy to hit cluster above the planet. What the [unwrite]? The bugs have been bombarding earth with asteroids. They obviously can somehow sense objects in space. So doesn't common sense tell you that they know those ships are in orbit? (and they do 'cuz the bugs start blasting the [unwrite] out of the fleet.) To make the humans seem even dumber they don't bombard the planet first, they just send troops down with futuristic M-16s. Hello....humans can build a ship that can travel to the other side of the [unwrite]ing galaxy but they haven't created a more effective weapon? It takes about 1000 rounds just to kill one bug! The troopers aren't much smarter. In order to attack they just run right up to the bugs in a big cluster[unwrite] so they can be more easily slaughtered! (I cracked up when one of the troopers saw the bugs and yelled "Lets get outta here!")

4.) When Rico kills the big fire breathing bug he becomes The Amazing Spider-Man! How the hell does he stand on this thing while its rampaging around without getting thrown off? Screw the military! He should have joined a rodeo!

5.) What the heck does Rico see in Carmen anyway? she's awful! She obviously doesn't care for him that much. That's why she breaks up with him. Carmen is kind of self centered. She's always got this goofy smile on her face even when things are really bad. After the ship she's on gets scraped by an asteroid and is damaged...and people have died...she's smiling! What a cold hearted wench!

6.) When Carmen and the other flight school trainees are going to the space station from…well, another space station, they display apprehension to the fact that Carmen is flying the shuttle. Someone says something along the lines of "She's crazy!". Uh, okay….if Carmen flies too fast of recklessly why let her fly? Why even let her train as a pilot? Boy, future military standards take a nosedive don't they? In today's military its safety first. Reckless behavior gets people killed. It destroys expensive equipment. Let me put it this way….if I have to get some guys across the base I'm on now how long do you think it'll be before the MP's come down on me if I drive my vehicle recklessly? Also, as Carmen pilots the shuttle, it goes inside and around and through the spacedock's support structure. What kind of stupid flight plan is that? Do the earth forces want to increase the chances of a collision?

7.) Zim, the senior drill instructor at the boot camp wants to go fight the bugs and his commander tells him that the only way he'll go into combat is if he gets himself busted down to private....and Zim does it! No wonder the humans aren't doing that well. Here's a man that is obviously really good at combat. An asset. Why not let him go fight? If you're sending children into battle you must need every swinging dick you can get! No, not the mobile Infantry. They 'd rather bust a senior NCO...as I said...an asset...to private! Private? He should be leading a platoon! He's worth more doing that! Zim ain't too bright either. Lets say his rank is equivalent to an army rank today of Sergeant first Class, an E-7. Why throw all that away? For a chance to get killed?

NUDITY AND SEX: Oh, you see a fair amount of boobies.

HUH?: The human race gets really stupid in the future. The military doesn't know much about the bugs. But they give specimens to high schools to use in biology class? That's not only stupid its highly immoral and sick! The one thing the humans do know about the bugs are that they are sentient! This isn't like dissecting a frog! Its a sentient lifeform! Where's the Prime directive when you need it?

Not only can the human race build galaxy spanning ships they've developed an innovative way to detect threats in space! When the asteroid that destroys Buenos Aires nears earth Carmen detects it aboard the ship she's on by watching the liquid in her coffee cup react to the gravitational force of the asteroid. What the [unwrite]? I guess that's a better system than say, radar or some kind of proximity sensor because only when Carmen sees the coffee in the cup moving does anyone react and then detect the asteroid with equipment. Stupid humans.

What kind of justice does the Mobile Infantry practice. I don't think Rico should have been punished for the death of Breckenridge on the live fire range. The knothead training instructors should! The idiots that designed that range should be horsewhipped and tarred and feathered! Rico was blamed because he removed Breckenridge's helmet to see if he could fix it…that was stupid, admittedly…but even if he had the helmet on he would have been killed. Look at where the rounds hit him in the head….those helmets offer no face cover. Even if Breckenridge was wearing the helmet he would have had the top half of his face blown off.

The characters in this movie envision the human race as the greatest living embodiment in existence. I don't know. The bugs seem to be pretty smart as well as dangerous. They can literally fart in the air and knock asteroids out of orbit to send them hurtling towards earth! Do you know how fantastic a feat that is!? That means that the bugs can not only pinpoint a target at the other side of the galaxy they can also send an asteroid about a triple-bazillion light-years or so across the vastness of space in...and I'm only guessing...months! I say months only to be a little conservative. If the bugs are bombing the Earth it may be only days or hours! But that's simply remarkable! not only can they do this, they must be damn good tacticians. By the end of the movie the Mobile Infantry is recruiting CHILDREN! If the humans are desperate enough to send children into battle doesn't that mean that the bugs are winning? (Not a big suprise since the human strategy seems to be "charge at the bugs with puny weapons and be sliced to itty bitty ribbons")

What does citizenship give you besides the right to vote? Its never clarified and it can't be much more than that. None of the characters seem to be having a crappy life. For that matter, they seem to have pretty good standards of living! Considering the bull[unwrite] and remarkable danger you have to place yourself in to win citizenship there has to be some kind of perk to make it worthwhile. Do citizens get paid more? Do citizens have the right to demand sex from non-citizens?

THE TALLY: I know I haven't painted a very nice picture of this movie but its not a total waste. There are a multitude of aliens vs humans movies that completely and utterly suck so bad that I'd rather stick my tongue in a power socket than watch again…this one wasn't that bad. Any credit it can take for being even a little watchable is solely based on special effects however. What this movie lacks in common sense it gives you in what guys want. Boobs, death, spaceships and monsters. Its not a particularly good movie. To be honest its pretty stupid and violent. But its fun to watch at times, and here in the Inferno that's what counts! Remember…the Inferno doesn't want movies with good taste…the Inferno wants movies that taste good!