This is my first foray into seeing a film properly heckled and picked apart by a professional team. I've always heard of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and this RiffTrax stuff, but since they were doing a live presentation on one of my favorite films, I felt it would be worth a cinema trip.
Starship Troopers in itself is a real hoot of a film. It's very over-the-top in every regard: the violence is bloody and extreme, the society portrayed is so fanatical that it's ridiculous, and the execution overall is cheesy (perhaps purposefully so). The cast is not particularly illustrious, and the film is showing its age. So, yeah, it lends itself pretty easily to mockery.
The RiffTrax group offers a decently hilarious commentary on many things that makes Starship Troopers inherently laughable. They often fill in the gaps in the dialogue with their own lines, giving hilarious responses to some of the characters' silly lines. They harp a lot on the actors; especially in making Denise Richards out to be a total ditz, while commenting on her later role in The World is Not Enough. They've also mocked Casper Van Dien, trying so hard to look handsome, and Neil Patrick Harris, still carrying his Doogie Howser iconography, and Patrick Muldoon, described as the "Rob Lowe on discount." The commentators also made good fun of the film's frequent cliches, especially with the gung-ho dialogue during the war scenes. They've harped on the repetitiveness of the action scenes, the low-grade special effects, certain logical gaps, some pop culture references, and just about anything else you can think of.
The presentation of this show was generally good, although I felt some of the commentary was drowned out by the movie's louder music, action, and dialogue, so there were a few jokes I missed out on. And for some odd reason, they brought out something called a "gorilla gram" during the film's nude scenes; obviously a tongue-in-cheek attempt to distract everybody from what was on-screen. The film is not presented in the best possible video or sound quality, but for this type of show, it hardly matters.
Overall, I laughed quite a bit during this show. As much as I enjoy Starship Troopers on its own, it is a riot when it's riffed. For those who love to laugh with folks making fun of a film, this should be a satisfying experience.
4.5/5 (Entertainment: Very Good | Content: Very Good | Presentation: Good)
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