Starship Troopers feels like a cross between Ender's Game and Dawson's Creek and Full Metal Jacket and Idiocracy and Star Wars and She's All That, which is to say that it feels simultaneously distinctive and unusual while also seeming fairly familiar and unoriginal.

But it's a generally fun ride. The characters are all only skin-deep, with stock characteristics and standard-issue problems to go along with their standard-issue personalities. The film, however, doesn't take itself too seriously, revelling in the cheesiness of its story and those carrying it along. That self-awareness, the way it steers into the skid of its own shallowness, makes it camp instead of kitsch and renders the whole exercise a lot more enjoyable.

The visual elements of the film are its greatest success. There's a comic book feel to the film, with bright, sharp colors, whether its neon alien goo or candy-toned spaceship interiors, that make the setup feel unreal enough that the audience doesn't have to take it seriously. Again, it's a bit cornball, but there's a distinct and coherent feel to every setting, from the toystore playset that is Rico's basic training campus, to the G.I. Joe battlefield look of the alien planet. The costumes, the spaceships, and even the bugs (with effects that hold up fairly well considering the film's nearly 20 years old) all work together to convey a lighter tone for an intergalactic war film.

That said, the various battle scenes in the last third of the film get very monotonous very quickly, and the film has its greatest success when its moving its slight and predictable plot forward than when it's pausing to show the excitement/horrors of war. The acting isn't much to speak of, though Denise Richards has a certain charm to her, Dina Meyer has a rough-around-the-edges quality that makes her character endearing, and Clancy Brown's drill sergeant is a trope character that the actor nevertheless breaths life into. Add in some interesting creature design and practical effects, and Starship Troopers becomes an entertaining, if fairly empty, theme park ride of a film.

The satire, especially in the little propaganda videos that permeate the film, do add a fun twist, and in some ways, Starship Troopers feels as much like a parody of both war films and sci-fi films as it does playing them straight, but I hesitate to give it too much credit on that from Verhoeven keeps it light for the most part, despite the blood and guts, and it lets a fairly insubstantial movie succeed on its own, cotton candy terms.