Wretched sequel

Watched Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation tonight (latest shipment from my Netflix queue). Well, actually that's a bit of an exaggeration; I watched the first part of it, and finally pushed the "Stop" button when it effectively turned into a slasher movie crossed with "Alien".

This movie stunk. It was awful. Bad. Terrible. Atrocious. Disgusting.

Let me put it another way: This movie is not going on my Top 100 list. If I had a Bottom 100 list, it would be in hot contention for #1. (Or #100, depending on how you would number a Bottom 100 list.) The script was bad, the acting was bad, the direction was bad, the special effects were bad, and the plot was virtually non-existent.

I liked the original Starship Troopers, even if it did take considerable liberties with Heinlein's book. That's par for the course with sci-fi movies (and lots of other genres as well). Far from a favorite movie, but OK. The sequel is wretched. I am so glad I didn't pay specifically to rent this from Hollywood Video. With Netflix I'm paying the same no matter how many movies I get. This one's going back tomorrow in exchange for something worth watching.

(As an aside, I saw only one actor that I had ever seen before -- but I couldn't place where I saw him. A quick lookup on IMDB showed that I wasn't imagining things; General Shepherd was played by Ed Lauter, who played the father of the cadet who got killed in the Kolvoord Starburst maneuver in Star Trek: The Next Generation's "The First Duty." I can't imagine the Starship Troopers role did anything for his career.)