'Starship Troopers,' 'Boogie Nights' on home video

By Scott Hettrick

'Starship Troopers,' expected to be a big hit last summer, flopped then. You can catch it at the rental store now

STARSHIP TROOPERS (1997, Columbia TriStar, priced for rental, rated R)

Directed by Paul Verhoeven; starring Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, Jake Busey, Neil Patrick Harris, Patrick Muldoon and Michael Ironside.

The surprise non-hit of the summer of 1997, "Starship Troopers" is the biggest, most cleverly amusing and violent black comedy since "RoboCop." Not surprisingly, it's from the same director, Paul Verhoeven.

Rather than a near-distant future in which corporations have taken over police forces with heavily armed robots as security guards, this time Verhoeven takes us to Robert A. Heinlein's distant future, in which the solar system is under attack by giant bugs that have begun to develop intelligence. Their species originates from a remote planet called P.

After a particularly brutal battle on P by ground troops who make an Alamo-like stand before being overrun by a seemingly unending rush of giant crawling and flying bugs, human military intelligence officers finally realize what is happening.

"We thought there might be a brain bug on P," Neil Patrick Harris says with a straight face. His uniform has the Nazi SS look. "We're in this for the species, boys and girls," he continues with his intentionally over-the-top dialogue that leaves viewers howling.

Tongue-in-cheek sci-fi saga

Once again, Verhoeven uses his wry view of the media of the future to frame a tongue-in-cheek epic science-fiction action saga.

An interactive television screen in the picture's first shot reveals the early stages of the brutal and bloody battle on P. "Want to know more?" the TV asks, as it provides a list of options to select. These TV breaks, which also popped up throughout "RoboCop" -- and are not unlike television commercials -- provide a narrative device as well as comic relief.

Recruitment promos show little kids playfully fighting over a high-tech weapon in the back yard, while soldiers with silly smiles look on. Other promos plug psychic hot lines and live prime-time coverage of executions. One news break offers a cheap shot at Mormon "extremists" who ignored federal warnings to stay out of a zone quarantined because of giant arachnids and suffered the bloody consequences at Fort Joe Smith.

After the initial attack scene on P, the story drops back in time one year for an hour's worth of back story about the class of young high school students volunteering for various branches of military service. Theirs is the kind of enthusiasm and unbridled patriotism that young Americans had as they proudly marched off to fight in World War II.

Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards are the principal characters, All-American Johnny Rico and the over-achiever girl he loves more than she loves him, Carmen Ibanez. While Carmen's high scores get her a dream job, a starship pilot, Rico is gutting it out in infantry boot camp and then in the trenches on desolate planets. Both become romantically involved with others.

Offering a boost in confidence when Rico signs up for the infantry, a recruiter with a mechanical arm and no legs tells Rico, "The mobile infantry made me the man I am today."

Even if you miss or are unimpressed with the metaphorical sarcasm and black comedy, the two-hour "Starship Troopers" offers more action and more high-tech alien encounters and eye-popping special effects than the blockbuster "Men in Black."

If you missed it at the theater, don't miss it on home video.

DVD TIP: BOOGIE NIGHTS

After the revealing final shot in "Boogie Nights," one might wonder what could possibly have been been left on the cutting room floor.

The DVD recut of "Boogie Nights" adds a running commentary and 20 minutes of cut footage

New Line Home Video's DVD version ($24.98) answers that question with nine deleted scenes delivered in a supplemental section.

Director/writer Paul Thomas not only provides a running commentary on a separate audio channel throughout the entire movie, but also offers commentary behind each of the deleted scenes, explaining why each was deleted.

There is no additional nudity in these recovered scenes, just 20 minutes of footage that was rightly cut from the picture, which already runs too long at more than two-and-a-half hours. But a quick scan will provide some chuckles, such as the first few moments of one that runs way too long in which star Mark Wahlberg, as his character-within-a-character Brock Landers, is improvising at a bar.

Music video also included

The most worthwhile supplemental element is the music video "Try" from Michael Penn, in which the camera follows him in a single take as he sings while walking down one of the country's longest corridors, encountering everything from snow and rain to marathon dancers and even bullets in his chest.

On the commentary behind the video, Anderson teases viewers by telling them that the final shot of the music video is an inside reference to the film's star, Burt Reynolds.

(c) 1998, Scott Hettrick. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate.

Related stories:

• Review: Fascist 'Starship' troops lacking in irony - Nov. 11, 1997
• Review: 'Boogie Nights' steams up the big screen - Oct. 18, 1997

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