Remember when Denise Richards was not a cautionary tale about insane women who date Charlie Sheen?
It's been a long time since I saw this movie the first time. I forgot how intentionally camp it was some times and unintentionally camp it was at others. When you think about the way they demonstrate the way that this is a world movement against the bug aggressors by having the lead characters from "The Latin Paradise." And everyone who is from Buenos Aires happens to be very, very white.
Space dramas suffer from the need to develop uniforms that make sense and still look military (where applicable). The fact that the flight teams wear heavy wool overcoats that look like re-imagined Nazi wardrobe while the infantry wears cut down Members Only jackets when off duty and clearly plastic and horribly ineffective armor when going into battle shows that the designers here didn't quite understand military uniforms in general.
The special effects generally stand the test of time. There are a few scenes that fall through - like the alien dissection - but the ship effects and much of the CG alien bugs that they show on the ground are done very well. There are always going to be one or two shots that don't look even close to real, and there will always be physics issues that apparently work out on paper, but they fall flat on screen. Ugh. and I don't know what the deal is with firearms in Hollywood, but the stupid blanks that they use are so damn inconsistent that the guns look like they aren't even firing at some points and wasting gunpowder at others.
The most used weapon is the rifle with a shotgun underneath. The shotgun seems more useful in most of the close combat situations our heroes find themselves in, but no one uses them. At one point, there's a guy with a giant flashlight integrated into the top of his rifle, and there's never really an explanation as to why this would be advantageous. The most impressive weapon are the "nukes." They inexplicably do exactly the right amount of damage every time. If it's just a single big bug, it blows up. If it's a "bug hole," the whole damn system comes down. With as ineffective as the rifles are against the enemy, it seems logical that a different weapon would have been employed - and they need tanks.
I didn't even remember that Amy Smart was in this movie. She's only in it for a scene, but she's noticeable. She certainly went on to more big-budget movies - unlike our hero played by Casper Van Dien. That guy has been in a lot, but he hasn't really been in anything - if you get what I mean. Dina Meyer has been in a few movies since this one, and I suspect that doing the topless scenes didn't hurt her career at all. Neil Patrick Harris has a role that was a lot smaller than I remember, but he does an okay job. It seems like he, more so than the others, is playing dress up in his Nazi SS-inspired uniform.
Oh, and I almost even forgot that there was a story. It's okay, I'm pretty sure the writers forgot, too. Bugs with no technology at all somehow manage to launch "spores" that cross solar systems. For some reason, they hate humans, and they are able to send asteroids through a wormhole to hit Earth. It doesn't make any sense, but it's just a backdrop for the special effects.
Story was lousy.
Acting was generally intentionally camp, but good.
Effects were very good.
Direction was good.
Dialog was pretty bad.
3.0/5