Touches You

Beautiful, moving film.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This is the second animated feature based on Paul Vorhoeven's adaptation of Robert Heinlein's work. To give it credit, it's vision of the Mobile Infantry is actually a lot closer to Heinlein's original vision, where the MI wears battle armor capable of inflicting lots of destruction on the animated insects. The plot line is that the new Sky Marshall allowed the bugs to invade Mars so she'd have an excuse to destroy the planet to any other colony that would want independence from the Federation. The animation still looks creepy as heck, even though some of the close-ups of faces are pretty detailed. The action scenes are dull, nothing we haven't seen in three previous movies.

Or is it some cut scenes are missing their video game? This movie wouldn't be bad if it was delivered in short segments around video game play. But as a movie, it leaves a lot to be desired.That's not accurate. It leaves everything to be desired.The core message in the movie is George W. Bush masterminded the 9/11 attack to gain popularity and steal the oil in Iraq. It's a rotten message, and the delivery is very poorly done.Everything about this movie is derivative. Elements that were clever in the 80's and 90's, like the news reports delivering important information and mood, are now just tired reruns. Just using those news reports with the sarcastic tone would be bad enough, but in this movie the news reports often repeat information that was just given. So any chance of their being interesting or necessary is lost in a wave of redundancy.The voice acting is painful to hear. Many of the female characters have a habit of adding an extra syllable to the end of words - like pouty teenage girls do." If it's not an extra syllable, it's a big intake of breath."Why are you doing this to me-uh?" "Send the ships (huhhhh)" It's very bad.Characters go from absolute panic to over confident swagger to absolute panic to overconfident swagger - repeat the cycle 10 more times - in the same scene. It happens scene after scene. Are they overconfident veterans or panicked kids? It'f fine to be both at different times, but it's not fine to be both at the same time.The shifting attitude of the characters goes right along with the overuse of the in-helmet, close up view of a panicked face. That's only broken up by the in-helmet, close up view of an overconfident face. It's shots by the numbers.The story is by the numbers. An egotistical leader plots evil doings to get the people on her side. One man uncovers the plot, and he pulls the two heroes into the standard busting the conspiracy action. Star Trek" The Undiscovered Country did it much better.There's some decent action buried in this mess, but it's buried too deep and it's too infrequent. That's where a video game would come in handy. If a player could get immersed in living the action for long stints between the awful movie, it would serve as glue that held the narrative together.But the video game is absent along with entertainment value.

I can't believe they spent more than $50 on the computer graphics for this movie. Like a poorly done first person shooter from the 90s. Story bland. Total waste of time.Watch the original - it's a classic. Don't bother with any of the sequels.

Whatever meaning the novel and original movie Starship Troopers had is lost in this anime sequel that borrows its main character from Metal Gear Solid. This is not Rico, it is Big Boss. I wonder when the legal battle will ensue.The whole political, moral and philosophical implications of an society dominated by the military and drenched in warfare is pushed to the background and so much so that merely making a reference to it seems to score favorable with the anime crowd. Oh blimey, they just quoted a line from the original movie! Awesome! As long as it is anime, which means over-muscled though guys, dramatic looking characters, supposedly funny nerds and long slender blacked hair girls with big breasts wearing suggestive outfits and anime haircuts. I swear that the air marshal is Lightning from Final Fantasy.What we get served is a trashy story of a bunch of stereotypical newbies that get dropped in the midst of a surprise attack on Mars by aliens nobody except the audience saw coming. There are issues over Mars trying to gain independence for the federation, but this is never addressed properly because it is just required as a plot device to get the newbies fighting giant bugs over a planet and for a population we never see or hear from. It is just shallow window dressing.What is even worse is that almost all the characters are boring run- of-the-mill anime tropes which is exacerbated by a shallow story-line that is goes something like: bunch of newbies wise up under stress to the surprise of their though as nails commander Rico.This movie is best avoided for anyone but die hard anime fans. Actually I do not dislike anime, but it ill fits with Starship Troopers. By all means, make a movie in which a bunch of staple characters fighting insectoid invaders. Just call it something else but Starship Troopers if that is all you want to do.