Subject: RETROSPECTIVE: STARGATE (1994)

From: [email-masked] (Ted Prigge)
Date: 23 Jun 1997 15:27:28 GMT

STARGATE
                       A film review by Ted Prigge
                        Copyright 1997 Ted Prigge

Director: Roland Emmerich
Writer: Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich
Starring: James Spader, Kurt Russel, Jaye Davidon, French Stewart

To put it bluntly, Ed Wood would have been proud of this.  A totally 
ridiculous plot is encompassed with bad humor, hokey drama, zero logic 
and a crap screenplay.  Also, a beautifully anti-climactic ending.  Not 
to say it didn't look intriguing when I saw the previews. So much for 
truth in advertising.

Roland Emmerich, who's later "Independence Day" would look like "The 400 
Blows" compared to this, co-writed and directed this inane sci-fi film 
which uses the cliche of there being some connection between Eqypt and 
aliens.  In a useless opening sequence, men find a stone in 1914 with 
hieroglyphics on it.  It wouldn't be till present day ('94) till they 
would actually figure it out.  They're decipherer?  A slightly-neurotic 
scientist (nice twist), Dr. Dan Jackson (James Spader, doing his best 
outside of erotic thrillers and some indy fare) who's life sucks so much 
that people walk out of his lectures after the third word.  Why do they 
use him to decipher what no one else could?  So there is a hokey ending! 
Duh!

He figures it out in about a minute.  Yea.  And then they get a suicidal 
colonel or something, "Jack" O'Neill (Kurt Russel, with his Wyat Earp 
locks in the beginning then a flat-top that would make Howie Long snap 
into a fetal position).  Why a suicidal colonel?  For the ending!  
You'll get the hang of this.  They open the stargate, a bunch of them go 
through it with a bomb to blow it up if they find anything bad.  After 
an overdone special effects thing, they're...inside a goddam pyramid.  
So they went to Egypt, right?  Wrong.  They're on another planet that 
was filmed in Egypt.

They discover a cilvilization ruled by Ra, the sun god (the androginous 
Jaye Davidson, with a voice modifier to make him sound like Barry White 
with asthma), and there are fights, explosions and a kiss between two 
people.  Yea.  Also melodrama, stupidity, hokey scenes and a bizarre 
language.  An anti-climactic ending ends with stupid lines ("Say hello 
to King Tut, asswhole!" - the quintessential line, lemme tell ya) and 
some convenient pesudo-pseudo-pseudo-character development.  By the end, 
you just wanna go home and watch, I don't know, the "Outer Limits" or 
something.  

The script's terrible.  The special effects are okay, but nothing great. 
The story's so weak that it's almost opaque.  The whole experience just 
isn't worth it unless you're so bored that you'd consider watching a 
"Full House" marathon...or this.  I'd pick this, obviously, but still, 
it's just not fun at all.  And I can't wait for it to premier on MST3K.

MY RATING (out of 5): *1/2