Review by: Giggles
01/23/04

Click here to listen to a rendition of the film's theme song.

This isn't going to really be a review. I won't review The Last Starfighter because I only need to say that I think its a nice little chunk of Sci-Fi from the eighties that lives and breathes with movies like Enemy Mine, Terminator, Dreamscape, and Overdrawn at the Memory Bank (haha).

So this article will be more of a retrospective of the film, a look back on a viewing that myself and fellow sitemate Roachito had just last week. Roachito's friend came along for the journey to the frontier as well. Armed with a heavy arsenal of whiskey and diet Dr.Pepper, we plunged into the world of Alex Rogan.

First of all, something hit us that was very Twilight Zone, causing us to begin pausing the DVD in two minute intervals.

We have here two people who worked on this movie with medieval themed names. Coincidence? Maybe. But it could also be a conspiracy. More on this later. Let's move on.

This is one of the first shots of the movie, to which Roachito happily replied, "Hey, I'm down with any movie that opens with a hound dog laying with his legs splayed, and a cat popping out of a mailbox."

There is something that goes unsaid here and I would like to point it out. WHO THE FUCK PUT THIS CAT IN THE MAILBOX? As you can see, the cat is opening the door itself, and it very well didn't shut the door behind it, so what gives? I know we're dealing with a trailer court here, but I expected so much more from Alex and his white trash brethren.

Well, once the story began (and believe me, with Roachito, his friend, and myself, it took about half an hour to get the plot running) we see that Alex Rogan has a problem. He doesn't want to be like trailer-fabulous anymore.

Alex wants to go explore the world and see things that no hick has ever laid eyes on before. But the responsibilities of being a "techie" soon weigh to hard on Alex's ambitions. He was invited to go to Silverlake with his friends but his mother informs him that he needs to stay behind and fix the cable so the old people can watch their soaps.

Obviously at the "Starlight Star Bright Trailer Court" cable repair takes all day because Alex never gets to join his friends at the lake.

Instead, Alex turns to his only vice, a STARFIGHTER videogame, which prompts you after eating a quarter:

Greetings Starfighter, you have been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xor and the Codan Armada. Ready? Perpare to blast off.

Alex tells his friends that he wants to "do" something with his life rather than go to city college, so instead he opts to fix televison sets and play videogames all the day long. Go figure.

He's mad. Damn right, he should be. Talking it over with the motorhome sage, Otis, we find out that Alex may just be whinning and he needs to relax and wait for something to happen.

Otis the Wise tells him: "Things change. They always do," and when something comes your way, "You gotta grab it with both hands and hold on tight!"

As Alex's girlfriend Maggie comes back from the lake, she notices that his score on the STARFIGHTER game has encroached on infamous territory. Alex is going for "the record." And as we can see, apparently "the record" for the Starfighter game carries a lot of weight around the trailer park.

Still high on his victory, Alex cannot be happy for long. His mother informs him that he didn't get the college loan he applied for. To this, the members of Youngmanridge became outraged (drunkenly so) (I think I spilled Old Grandad's on my sleeve, in fact).

They didn't have a FAFSA back in the eighties? What the hell? Alex may have been poor but that sure as shit doesn't mean that the government wouldn't mind making him poorer with a nice hefty loan payment in the near future.

Now things begin to pick up in Alex's drole life of fuseboxes and 6 bit videogames. A man named Centauri beckons him over to what looks like a Delorian minivan. Alex shuns him and tells him that the shop is closed, to which he replies, "I'm not here for cigarettes or bubblegum, my boy!" Indeed, just what are you here for, you old rascal?

Alex gets in the car, tag-teams a shadowy passenger, who abruptly leaves, and then Centauri takes off. At one point a cop's radar gun picks up the DeloriVan taking a corner at 303 mph! We are not surprised afterward to see the vehicle blast off and take Alex to a weird spacestation inhabited by various creatures, who all share a common goal, "Victory or Death!"

As they land, Centauri puts it best: "Reetah-Nah. Reetah-Nah."

Either Grig has a turtle head or a skull that looks like atheletic's dick, but we love him anyway. What's there not to love? He looks like Bossk's authoritative uncle or something, either that or a stoic relative of Cobra Kaun.

Okay, okay, I mixed He-Man and Starwars, didn't I? Well, if you watch the Dolph Lungren He-Man movie, they did the same thing. So chill, others have commited the crime before me, but it's nowhere as devious and manipulating as how Centauri recruits new Starfighters.

The videogame was a test to bring Alex to them, and as Alex continues to throw a fit (because he's on a spaceship -- what a dork!) Grig warily asks, "Up to your old Excaliber tricks again, hey, Centauri?"

--- So let's pause a moment, because we at Youngmanridge we're astounded by this new revelation. If Centauri was responsible for the sword Excaliber and it was used as a test, similiar to the STARFIGHTER videogame, was King Arthur once a Starfighter? After all, the Starfighter emblem has a sword on it.---

You see the conspiracy now? Director Castle and Director of Photography King had something to do with this!

As Alex soaks in the atmosphere, he gets himself a language decoder installed on his shirt. Nice way to break the language barrier but my point was this: Wouldn't you see the mouths of the aliens moving out-of-sync? Sure you might be able to understand what they are saying with the device translating for you, but the mouths would looked dubbed.

It seems that the galaxy is in a state of unrest. Xor, for whatever reason, has decided to be a fuckface and conquer everyone (they might have said why, but its one of those things you don't listen to). The Starfighters are few but their resolve is strong. They need to take down that Codan Armada that is backing Xor. However, Xor sends a transmission to convince them otherwise.

Xor continues to watch his handy work as he turns the old gray man's head into a mass of melting red playdoh.

I don't know if it was the subject matter, or the difference in gender, but at this point in the film, Roachito's friend became ill. I'm guessing it was the Old Grandad's Whiskey, because Grandad won't take it easy on you if you pour generously. But, all in all, Roachito and I came to a conclusion about the unfortunate situation:

If you wanna hang with the Youngmanridge crew, you're gonna be
fucked up 39 minutes into "The Last Starfighter."

Alex bitches out after he sees the guy's head melt. Pussy. Well, at any rate, Centauri returns him home in a sour mood, but not after giving him some questions to ponder, one of which was: "Did Goloka think the Youloos were too ugly to save?"

Unaffected, Alex returns to the trailor court to find an android who has taken his place. Roachito wanted to make known his love of this concept: I wish I had my own Beta. I could stay at home and play videogames while that fucker goes to work.

The one thing that Alex didn't count on was returning home to find bounty hunters with inverted, fanged vagina faces. Xor has marked Alex as a Starfighter and now he has no choice. There's no more bitching out for Mr.Alex Rogan. He has to get in the cockpit and blast his way through the Codan Armada.

Alex calls Centauri to have him come pick up BETA, but just as Centauri arrives, the bounty hunter shoots, and guess who throws himself in front of the blast?

Was Centauri dead?

"No," he replies, "just a scratch."

Yeah right, like a scratch all the way through your body, old man.

Alex returns to find that he is the last Starfighter and must, with Grig's help, destroy the entire Codan Armada. After some close scrapes, and some Tron-like CGI (props though, props. This was the 80s folks), we get to see one of the coolest space scenes ever. DEATH BLOSSOM. It's pictured above, but a motionless picture does it no justice. Rent or buy the movie just for twenty seconds of sublime ahhilation.

When Alex has saved the day, he is asked to "rebuild the legion," to which he cleverly responds, "Woh, woh, woh, rebuild the legion?" Upon consideration of this daunting task, he returns to Earth with Grig to the "mobile home that never went anywhere." He needs to take Maggie with him and confront the final dilemma: Maggie doesn't want to go to outerspace -- she likes being white trash.

Regardless, Grannie releases Maggie from her servitude, and Alex and her go up into the Starfighter together. Otis stands by, thinking about how he can get rich off the intergallactic event, not even considering that he will be lumped in with the eighty-six thousand other trailer courts who are making the same claim. "This baby really packs a punch!" he jubilantly exclaims. I dunno though. Otis may very well be able to sell icecubes to an Eskimo. The planet Earth better keep an eye on him.

In conclusion, I hope I've shed a light on the movie, and I hope if you haven't seen it in a while, you'll go and rent it (rent the VHS with the faded cover, along with Bumfights, to see the videostore people really look at you sideways).

And know this when you pay those three well-spent dollars: the guys at Youngmanridge believe in this movie, and they will contend any day of the week and ten times on Sunday that "The Last Starfighter is like a brilliant opera without the music."

So, you ask, "What do we do now?"