Jurassic Park started a trend in movie making a few years back: spend the money on special effects and buy your actors at the Hollywood Quick-Save. Jurassic drew people into movie theatres looking for dinosaurs, not movie stars. "Stargate" then "Independence Day" followed suit and were hugely successful at the box office. Suddenly, a new star was born: the Computer Generated Image.

Thankfully, CGI’s appeal has been fleeting. "The Lost World", a tedious, lazy sequel to Jurassic Park fell flat because it relied too heavily on special effects. Visual effects are merely a tool that aids in the telling. Without a story you’ve got nothing.

Which brings me to "Starship Troopers". Paul Verhoeven has made an entire movie built on a simple premise. Mankind goes to war with bugs at the other end of the galaxy. Why? Never mind. Suffice to say, they don’t like us and we don’t like them.

Young people from around the world are recruited into military service by the ultra-right wing, yet racially integrated government, with the promise of fun, excitement and "guaranteed citizenship". Eventually the war with the bugs escalates and our heroes are sent to the insect home world to kick some Arachnid ass (if they have one).

The trouble is that the cast is almost entirely made up of Z list nobodies who just don’t have the necessary charisma for the big screen. Most are on their way to "Baywatch" or "Melrose Place", they look great but that’s the limit of their talent. Michael Ironside and Clancy Brown play themselves as usual, Van Dien nearly makes the grade with his square-jawed Roger Ramjet act, but almost everyone else brings the film down.

By casting people (apparently) on looks alone, it is extremely difficult to buy into the story. You half expect one of the Troopers to stop mid-battle and complain about a broken nail.

The special effects, however, are awesome. Sadly, a complete lack of tension or excitement spoils the efforts of the FX crews. It doesn’t matter how good the bugs look, how many there are or how big: if they don’t scare me, it’s all a bit pointless.

This would all be much more interesting if we had an actual plot to follow. One element of Starship Troopers that works is the humour. However, this is almost entirely resigned to interludes of futuristic propaganda that pepper the film in a style similar to that of Robocop. There’s just not enough of it to make the film worthwhile.

If this hadn’t cost so much it would have gone straight to video, just another cynical attempt to throw money at the screen in order to attract us into the stalls. Very disappointing.