Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) falls for Carmen (Denise Richards) so joins the army to be with her.

Unfortunately he is infantry, she is airforce. They are parted, she dumps him, only to be reunited by interplanetary mayhem and following a moment of brain suck-out madness involving her new boyfriend and a monster.

"A comic book parody of its genre. All the fun of the comic strip without the inconvenience of having to turn the pages."

"Sort of like Star Wars but with more administration."

"The knife thrown into the hand of the recruit was shocking at first, but rewind and look closely and the hand looks too big. It didn't actually go through his hand at all! This ruined my enjoyment of this movie. I want my money back."

"A bit like one of those High School TV shows set near a beach, but in space, more violent and the threat of a nice evening meal being ruined by pissed-off giant crunchy creatures ten times your size."

"On one level this movie appears to be as dumb as a peanut, look closer and it is a reasonable semi-intelligent satire on its genre and society's structure's and mores."

"Much less camp than Star Wars and with no annoying metal robot."

"I have never seen a musical set in space and whilst this movie is not a musical, it only needs a few songs and you are there."

"If Elvis had been 30 in 1997, when this movie was made, he would have been its star."

"Thank goodness the man was only junior to his girlfriend for about 10 minutes of screen time. He was suitably then promoted, upholding the traditional paternalistic societal role play."

"This movie is surprisingly long, just when you thought it has finished it starts up again."

An entertaining ride down a familiar path. Tongue in cheek at times, teen soap opera at others, the action is very good. Not brainless by a long shot, although still basically an actioner.

The scene in which all the creatures attack was quite cutting edge in its time.

October 9 , 2002