barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin) (07/07/84)
Nano-review: Fun
I saw the sneak preview of "The Last Starfighter" tonight. It was fun,
although not great. It is sort of a ripoff of the original "Star Wars",
but it doesn't take itself as seriously as SW or any of the other
clones. Instead of taking place "a long time ago in a galaxy far away"
it takes place now, in midwestern America. The hero is a teenager who
longs to escape from the trailer camp where he has grown up. He breaks
the record on a video game, and is soon drafted by the Star League to
defend The Frontier against the treacherous Xur and the Ko-Dan warriors.
Can't go much further into the plot without spoiling it.
It was kind of hokey. However, they injected a good amount of humor
into it. For instance, when the protagonist is about to break the video
game record everyone in the trailer camp gathers around, cheering him
on; it is obvious that this is the most exciting thing to happen in
years for this bunch.
The characters are mostly pretty shallow (even more so than in SW).
Lance Guest, who plays the hero, gets to play two characters (can't say
why without a spoiler). He does a good job with the second character.
Robert Preston is the best character in the film. He plays Centauri,
who planted the video game in various locations in hopes of finding
someone with "the gift", and who drags the hero off to be heroic. He
plays him as the standard Preston con man, the same one as in "The Music
Man" and "Victor/Victoria." He is so cool and suave, in his own way,
that I rarely get tired of him. I also like his voice. Barbara Bosson
(Faye Furrillo (sp?) from "Hill Street Blues") has a medium-sized role
as the protagonist's mother; she plays this character pretty much like
Faye.
Then of course, there are the special effects. Most of the special
effects were done using computer animation, taking up lots of computrons
on a Cray X-MP. The credits even read:
Supercomputer: Cray X-MP
They were quite good, much better than Tron. It was quite obvious,
though, that they were computer generated. This seemed to me to be due
to lots of the angles that you saw on things. It might have been on
purpose, or it might just be me expecting certain objects to be smoother
and rounder than the animators wanted them to be. On the other hand,
there were times when if you looked at the thing on the screen in just
the right way it *almost* looked solid.
Recommendation: go see it if you like escapism.
--
Barry Margolin
ARPA: barmar@MIT-Multics
UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmarterryl@tekchips.UUCP (Terry Laskodi) (07/08/84)
Well, I too went and saw it at a sneak preview last night, but I
have a totally different opinion of it: Too damn sugary-sweet. If you
thought that Return of the Jedi was too sugary-sweet, then I'd recommend
that you not see this movie.
My major complaints:
Totally unbelievable plot. Like the previous reviewer said, it takes
place in present day. I think it would have worked much better if it was
set in the future.
The humor was really superficial. Can't really give any specifics 'cause
that would give away some of the film, but the Playboy bit just wasn't that
funny.
They spent too much time in present day and not enough time in the
fantasy/space world. Slowed the movie down some.
Along with the above comment, I thought the big fight scene was a little
too unbelievable. Too neat, and the hero got out of it much too easily.
It seemed to me that this movie was aimed at a pre-teenage audience.
Very little violence (almost non-existant) and what little there was,
was tailored to the pre-teenage audience.
To me, much of the graphics looked like animation, nothing at all like
Star Wars ot Star Trek.
As an aside, the ending of this movie leaves it wide open for a sequel,
probably depending on how sucessful this one is. In my opinion, I don't
think this one is going to be too sucessful, but then again I could be
totally wrong. The pre-teenage audience must just make this a hit.
All in all, I'd give it a 5 out of 10. Since I saw it at a sneak preview,
I saw it with another movie so I didn't feel like I wasted $4.50.