Subject: REVIEW: STARGATE

From: [email-masked] (Craig Good)
Date: Wed, 2 Nov 1994 13:50:17 GMT

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				 STARGATE
		       A film review by Craig Good
			Copyright 1994 Craig Good

     Let's hear it for the Sun god!  He's a real fun god!  Ra!  Ra!  Ra!

     Like many others, I ate up the trailers for "Stargate" in
anticipation if its release.  As soon as it opened, I saw it at one of
the biggest theatres in town.  The good news is that the movie
delivered everything it promised to me in the trailers.  It's big, art
directed to the hilt, has some stunning effects, and crowd scenes like
we haven't seen since, well, DUNE.  The bad news is--that's all it
delivered.

     The story is pretty basic and mindless.  That makes it just a
little better than most "Star Trek" movies and TV episodes.  But that's
damning with faint praise.  Remember, though, that the trailer never
promised a Merchant/Ivory film.

     On some levels the movie works quite well.  It does a pretty good
job at the hand-waving technobabble that is seemingly so necessary in
science fiction, and resists the temptation to over-explain the
technology.  That, coupled with the stunning look, would be enough to
convey the impression of a relatively intelligent film were it not for
a few glaring stupidities.

     The first thing is the "military" mission--led by Kurt
Russell--which is accompanied by rogue Egyptologist James Spader
on the journey through the stargate.  This has to be the most
*un*-military bunch of guys I've seen since "F-Troop."  Except for
packing along some nice guns and remembering to say "over" at the end
of most of their radio transmissions, this little pack acts nothing
like any group who ever donned a uniform for real, much less the crack
Special Forces one would expect to find on this mission.

     And, very minor spoiler here, you know things aren't going well in
the script department when, because of the medallion he's wearing,
Spader is mistaken for a diety by the natives.  My, I certainly didn't
see *that* one coming.

     Also along for the slow, ponderous ride is Jaye Davidson who wears
some simply fabulous outfits in his role as Ra, the sun god.
Ironically, he looks more feminine in his kingly garb than he ever did
in drag in THE CRYING GAME.  He doesn't get to do much more than pose,
though, and his voice is replaced with a heavily processed growl that
is at times hard to understand.

     There's an audience for STARGATE: people who, like me, catch it
on a matinee and with low expectations, or kids who are still enjoying
the "gee whiz" stage of life.  That audience is likely too small for it
to recoup the rumored $55 million budget, and I'm only sorry that they
didn't pare it down to $54 million to have some more money to spend on
the script.

		--Craig