The Last Starfighter Review!!!
SYNOPSIS: Alex Rogan is a teenager who does little else besides play a STARFIGHTER video game in his trailer park. When he succeeds in reaching a new high score, he is whisked away to outer space, where he is drafted as a pilot in a space fleet. The goal: to protect a federation of planets from an evil invading force.
ANALYSIS: This was one of the glut of sci-fi/fantasy films to come out in the 1980s on the heels of Star Wars. Krull, Conan, Legend...they're all cut from the same cloth. The Last Starfighter, though, is slightly different in that it is the wet dream for geeky gamers and nerds alike: finding themselves in the middle of their favorite video game. However, whereas the world of Krull was at least halfway believable because the production design, costumes and effects tried to be realistic, Starfighter feels cheap, looks derivative and has employs Atari-age effects.
Someone wanted to mix a sci-fi adventure with topical humor. Whoever had the idea should be shot, not because it's done particularly badly, but because, as with anything topical, the ideas behind it dry up once a dozen or so years pass. Take the cut quote above. Sure, we all understand what Centauri is saying and the tongue in cheek joke the writers were going for. But is it really necessary? No. In the rush to pander to the kids, the adults were left far behind.
Another case in point: the makeup and alien effects are godawful. Not bad, but awful. I'm talking original Star Trek awful. None of the aliens are able to emote because the prosthetics feel like party store Halloween costumes. The effects are Atari-quality; I'm not sure if it's intentional to go along with the theme of the movie or if this really was the best they could come up with. And the story-at one point, the entire trailer park community comes to root Alex on when he's near the high score-is preposterously fake. We might remember this as a good flick from the 1980s. It's not. Stay away.