Stargate

Stargate is a clever adventure that should find its audience. Read full review

Stargate is a blast from the past in many ways, but it imaginatively employs the latest special effects technology to give audiences new thrills. [24 Oct 1994]

It works not because ridiculousness is concealed, but because ridiculousness on this scale becomes something else. Don't let anyone tell you that Stargate, lifeless script and all, isn't clunky fun, proudly trembling on the brink of classic camp. [28 Oct 1994, p.48]

The movie devolves into a kind of high-tech Flash Gordon, with Ra as a cross- dressed Ming and Russell and Spader as the heroes required to chase big lugs with ray-guns around the inside of a pyramid. Things get pretty brainless before it's over, although Russell does get to deliver a great send-off line. [28 Oct 1994, p.5]

Stargate is peppered with numerous minor faults, some of which - although not all - are easily forgiven. It's the bigger plot problems and lackluster climax which are more difficult to excuse. Read full review

Roland Emmerich hasn't bettered us as a culture with Stargate, but he hasn't corrupted us, either. Read full review

By the end, the film’s early promise has pretty much degenerated into routine pyrotechnics. Read full review

The film has flashes of psychedelic visual energy, but its story is limp. Read full review

Without Davidson Stargate might seem clunky and routine, but he gives it a weirdo charge. It may be a lousy movie, but it's a more enjoyably lousy movie than most. Read full review

The arrival of Ra (Jaye Davidson), bearing sci-fi cliches, changes Stargate from a merely hokey movie to one that is truly ridiculous. Read full review

Magic it ain't, but competent isn't far off the mark. Neither is hum-drum. [28 Oct 1994]

The special effects turn out to be not very special and not very effective, and the movie never achieves the lunatic grandeur of the truly demented. Stargate is strictly for the peanut gallery. Read full review

While this plot sketch suggests some elements that make Stargate intriguing, however, the movie ultimately fails to deliver on its promise of an intelligent story. [4 Nov 1994, p.L27]

Stargate is like a film school exercise. Assignment: Conceive of the weirdest plot you can think of, and reduce it as quickly as possible to action movie cliches. Read full review

The lack of imagination in Stargate is distressing. Who would agree to fund such an expensive project based on such a perfunctory and dull script? All the creativity here has been spent on nice costumes and some cool morphing Anubis headgear. The story is so cliched it's laughable. [28 Oct 1994, p.G6]

Stargate is a time-warped implosion of baffling space mysticism, a costume budget gone mad, and too much sand for any movie short of Lawrence of Arabia. It's pretty, vacant and pointless; an interactive computer game with which we just don't feel like getting involved. [28 Oct 1994, p.10C]

What this juvenile adventure has in spades is special effects and picturesque locations. What it lacks is an emotional link to make the Saturday afternoon he-man posturing palatable, or at least bearable. Read full review