It did to me too, at the time I read it, but years later, in light of more experience with actual human beings I decided that it’s abysmally vulnerable to manipulation, once you have the power you make sure no one with the opposite political ideology ever gets to be a citizen.
In favor of my policies? here, pass this rough but manageable basic military course.
Against? To Pluto with you, and you better warm it at least ten degrees before you leave soldier!
Regarding the novel Starship Troopers, it’s, like a lot of works, complicated. And thus better read and judged on it’s own merits. And it’s a definite hijack. But about the movie, the thing missed most from the book in terms of the society and training that got nearly completely left out is that they are trying to make being a full citizen as difficult as possible (ie you really, Really have to want it) BUT they CANNOT deny it to you. Even if you have no qualifications to actually fight, if you demand to serve, they’ll find something equally hard, equally trying, but they can’t wash you out without your permission.
As I said, it’s complicated. But the movie glossed over (for satire, for poor writing, or just laziness) almost all nuance in favor of big action, boobs, and drama.
On a related note, I mentioned the novel Battlefield Earth back in # 18, in that it’s uninspired and unoriginal, it isn’t terrible. Full of Burroughs-esque noble savage, corn-fed good old boy hero trying to do the right thing and capitol ‘E’ evil enemies. As it progresses though, there’s a couple of moments where it subverts itself (knowingly and not), and it isn’t terrible. But the triumph of good old American style capitalism and enlightened self-interest feels uncomfortably smug.
I remember one exchange in Ghostbusters 2 that had me on the floor in tears, I was laughing so hard ("I didn’t have toys when I was a kid. “Not even a Slinky?” “I had half of a Slinky…but I straightened it.” No idea why that absolutely slayed me.) but I spent the entire rest of the movie staring at the screen with, I’m certain, a dead-fish gaping-mouthed baffled expression on my face, as absolutely nothing funny or interesting was done or said.
Heinlein? Unreflective?
Even if you disagree with the man’s politics, you clearly don’t know him or his writing.
Jingoistic it ain’t
That wasn’t the way it worked. One volunteered for a particular “occupation” or line of work. Johnny, the first person narrator, did list the military but not as a first choice. He simply didn’t get into the ones ahead of it. And if he had been unfit for the military they would still have found something else for him to do, to earn citizenship.He did mention that if a blind and deaf paraplegic wanted to become a citizen the government HAD to find something they were capable of doing to earn it.
And now I see Parallel Lines beat me to the kind of response I wanted to make.
It was “satire after the fact”-When the reviewers started making fun of ST, the director pretended that satire was always his intent.
I have heard this argument, and yes, always found the “I was just joking/I was always satire” excuse to be questionable at best. 
I got bit by a monkey in the monkey forest in Indonesia back in the day. Was given a band aid by the workers there. The next day we took a plane back to the US and Outbreak was the film showed on the plane. I thought we were all going to die.
It pains me a little to not see these on the list. I’m hoping I just missed where they were posted.
A.I. - The movie just wouldn’t end. It’s the only movie I’ve ever walked out of.
Tommy Boy - I never found anything remotely funny about Chris Farley. To me, he was trying to be Belushi without having the talent.
Honorable mention:
Napoleon Dynamite - never laughed once. (and I do appreciate that this one was previously mentioned in this thread).
All of the Cheech and Chong movies other than “Up in Smoke” (which had a certain 70s charm).
The stupid asteroid twins, Deep Impact and/or Asteroid. I forget which one I laid down my $1.50 at the Smithtown singleplex theatre but it’s one of the few I walked out on in an actual theatre in mid-movie. I have reason to think the other one was not better but I only saw one of them in all fairness.
Bridesmaids. I don’t find liquid fecal matter anywhere near as amusing as they think I should.
Contact. I’ve ranted about it before:
Pitch Perfect Yeesh more bodily fluids I didn’t really need to see
The Shining (Stanley Kubrick) not because it was a truly awful movie so much as it was a truly mediocre movie derived from a stunningly brilliant book that deserved far better.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang same problem except it was actually a pretty awful movie. Someone should make a movie actually based on Ian Fleming’s book.
I Robot same problem x3, complete inversion of Asimov’s viewpoint. Someone should lynch the people involved.
Event Horizon
Haunted spaceships don’t work.
And I have a feeling that somebody really wanted to make a movie out of Alfred Bester’s The Stars my Destination (AKA Tyger, Tyger) but couldn’t persuade the Powers That Be, so they turned out this dreck instead. No other way can I account for the “Burning Man” scenes.
James Cameron’s Avatar. Complete crap. I can’t believe he’s going to spend the next decade making sequels to this dreck.
Any movie by Jar Jar Abrams. Especially his Star Trek movies.
I finally saw “American Beauty” a few years later, probably on VHS. I loved it, but I could understand why so many people didn’t, because they were living it themselves.
Me too.
I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t like it, because the characters and their actions felt like the contrived creations of a screenwriter rather than real people, and it didn’t resonate with me at all.
That is most certainly not why I hated it myself. I hated it because the characters were all caricatures, all of them tired tropes – angelic gay couple, the couple who were only a pair of childish mid-life crises, the teenagers Wise Beyond Their Years, the suprise homophobe … the whole thing was as trite and as obvious as possible. And, so smug about itself. Suburbia is not as idyllic as it seems! Everyone is bored and acting out! Stop the fucking presses.
As I recall, the other film I watched that week was A Heart In Winter, a French film that was the polar opposite; a subtle, bitter, sad character study; a small exquisite work of art. The contrast was overwhelming.
I usually don’t do this, fear it will advertise it (some might watch it, and every mention is another million google search results) but here goes:
“The Doors”
“The Irishman”
“Do The Right Thing”
This movie?
Try “The Face of Another” (better Japanese movie that is kinda similar)
They showed this movie during finals week (to keep kids from killing themselves from stress?), and it was a lot of fun!
And I just remembered Eyes Wide Shut, made all the worse by the fact that I was watching it in a theater with my mother at age 13. This was back in the day when you just drove up to a theater and picked a movie based on the show time and the poster. Our understanding of the film went as deep as, “Oh, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, that sounds interesting.”
It was not interesting. It was just hours and hours of the most boring orgies imaginable. Weird arthouse sex stuff with my Mom sitting right there.
My mother apologized to my profusely afterward. “I’m so sorry. I thought it was going somewhere!”
It didn’t.
I fucking hate Kubrick.
You and I have a much different recollection of how movies were selected back in 1999. Even in the 80s, we’d look in a newspaper to see what was playing and get the show times.