Starship Troopers
TriStar Pictures | Release Date: November 7, 1997 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
52
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 20 Critic Reviews
Positive:
7
Mixed:
10
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
USA TodayMike Clark
This twisted space opera serves up carcasses in six-digit figures but is foremost a sendup for the ages. Read full review
88
San Francisco ExaminerGeorge Powell
Jingoistic politics are not proper or prudent in the pluralistic human society of the 1990s. It's much easier to assuage these baser urges by facing a real nonhuman enemy that just wants to kill you. War is gore. You or them. That message is the real strength of "Starship Troopers," although many may find it morally flawed. No matter, this is powerful entertainment that appeals to our most basic instincts. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
The movie is sensationally exciting, but its hey-kids-let s-put-on-a-war! story line plays like Beverly Hills, 90210 recast as a military-recruitment film for the Third Reich. Read full review
80
VarietyTodd McCarthy
A spectacularly gung-ho sci-fi epic that delivers two hours of good, nasty fun. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Although none of the characters are fleshed out much beyond the comic book level, we nevertheless find our sympathies aligning with them. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
The film's special effects are astonishing, but the most notable and unexpected thing is its tone. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleRussell Smith
Wall to wall blood 'n' guts laced with surprisingly keen social satire, much of it targeting the fatuousness of media culture. Read full review
60
TimeRichard Schickel
Maybe the filmmakers are so lost in their slambang visual effects that they don't give a hoot about the movie's scariest implications. [10 Nov 1997, p.102]
60
TV Guide MagazineSandra Contreras
This is a movie nasty enough to kill off the major characters twice and still manage to serve up a happy ending. Read full review
60
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Nothing like the sight of thousands of scuttling, hideous, practically indestructible insects crawling up the sides of a fortress, hellbent on destroying the human race. As they keep coming and coming, they’re the only things in this movie earning your money. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Faithfully represents Heinlein's militarism, his Big Brother state, and a value system in which the highest good is to kill a friend before the Bugs can eat him. The underlying ideas are the most interesting aspect of the film. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Paul Verhoeven's movie takes more action than ideas from Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 novel, which is just as well, considering the book's goofy suggestion that military veterans should control society from top to bottom. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
The word "arachnid," as it's said so contemptuously in the movie, begins to sound suspiciously like "Iraqi," and indeed, we soon see the elite bugs are hunkered down in their desert fortress, resisting the mighty air assaults of the Federation. The conclusion of our story involves unearthing the chief bug. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
What Ed Neumeier's script provides instead is a cheerfully lobotomized, always watchable experience that has the simple-mindedness of a live-action comic book, with no words spoken that wouldn't be right at home in a funny paper dialogue balloon. Not just one comic book either, but an improbable and delirious combination of "Weird Science," "Betty and Veronica" and "Sgt. Rock and His Howling Commandos." Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
A collection of shots and characters designed to circle the globe rather than to say anything much about either the filmmakers or the audience, a triumph of multinational capital at work rather than of people or ideas. Read full review
40
Dallas ObserverPeter Rainer
What makes the claptrap in Starship Troopers so flabbergasting is that it's monumentally scaled. Read full review
40
The New York TimesJanet Maslin
Pretty actors, grisly critters, brains sucked out of skulls, buckets of green slime and a plot that is half beach blanket bingo, half Iwo Jima. Read full review
30
NewsweekJeff Giles
An empty videogame of a movie about interplanetary pest control. Read full review
30
SalonScott Rosenberg
In this bizarrely discordant mixture of ultraviolent action footage, bad acting, crisp special effects and futuristic camp, the remnants of Heinlein's rhetoric of military pride stick out like a grimy Marine uniform at a high-toned Hollywood party. Read full review
20
Washington PostRita Kempley
It's exactly like "Star Wars" -- if you subtract a good story, sympathetic characters, intelligence, wit and moral purpose. Read full review
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