The Last Starfighter is a 1984 sci-fi comedy/adventure kind of thing starring Lance Guest, Catherine Mary Stewart, Robert Preston, Chris Hebert, Norman Snow, Dan O'Herlihy, Barbara Bosson, and Dan Mason.
Alex Rogan (Guest) is a twenty-something...sorry, a "teenager" (I kid, but this happens a lot where they cast people in their 20s to play teens) living in the Starlite Starbrite trailer park with his mother (Bosson) and little brother Louis (Hebert). (Something I never noticed until last night is that his father is shown in a picture and Alex points out his "folks," but his father is never mentioned specifically.) Anyway, Alex really wants to get the hell out of her, because like, obviously, but he's having trouble getting a student loan to go to college, which dates this movie as much as the effects. Also, the people in the trailer park work him to death having him do everything from chores to electrician work to construction, and one hopes they're at least paying him a little.
Anyway, one night Alex, having been rejected for a loan and kind of on the outs with his girlfriend Maggie (Stewart), gets in the zone and breaks the record on the Starfighter video game near the general store. The whole trailer park comes out to pat him on the back (I love the old lady yelling "The command ship! What's the command ship?"), and he's feeling pretty good about himself, and then Harold Hill a fast-talking dude in a slick, quasi-Delorean pulls up (Preston; the dude, not the car) and whisks him way into space!
Turns out that the video game was an interstellar recruitment tool and that "Ko-Dan Empire" ruled by "Xur" that the game gives as backstory are very real and about to...I dunno, take over, destroy the universe, standard bad guy stuff. Alex is one of the few "starfighters" with "the gift", though that "gift" seems to really be "being good at shooting things with lasers", which seems like the sort of thing one could learn, but whatever.
Alex goes through the standard hero's journey, refuses the call, goes home, discovers they've put a robot in his place (also Guest), some slimy aliens come to kill him, Alex decides he's gotta go back and face the music with the help of his reptilian sidekick/navigator, Grig (O'Herlihy). In the end, he destroys the Death Star One Ring of Power Ko-Dan Armada, though Xur (Snow) himself escapes to plot the sequel! (A sequel did not happen.)
I used to rent this movie a lot when I was a kid. It's cute, it's inoffensive, there are some good laughs. I'm sure I liked the effects when I was younger, now they look like what they are - proto CGI, and the practical effects have aged so much better. But rewatching the movie, I think the reason I took to it was the beginnings of something that would stick with me for years: I love it in movies where a community comes together and supports its people. The folks in the trailer park may take Alex for granted, but they clearly love him. Maggie is afraid to leave and is worried about her grandmother, but her reasons are understandable and she takes the leap of faith at the end (is that kind of naive on her part? Sure, but she's hardly the only 18-year-old who's done that).
The actual storyline is pretty clearly a Star Wars ripoff, though the Excalibur-like recruitment test (which was a stated inspiration by the screenwriter) gives it some personality. Alex is a good kid and I think the movie threads the needle between him being scared to die and wanting to go home with letting him come into his own as a hero. There are some good laughs, Robert Preston is always fun to watch even when he's a bug-eyed alien. I question the design choice to have the ruling alien species have these big-ass bald spots, but that's just a personal preference.
Like I said, it's an inoffensive movie and it's got some nostalgia factor for me. Kinda makes me want to watch Explorers and D.A.R.Y.L.
My Grade: B
Rewatch Value: Medium-high
Next up: Midsommar
No comments:
Post a Comment