This is what should be called the ultimate in bad movies - lots of violence and nudity put in place to offset the bad acting and script. I should call this the ultimate bad movie, but I can't - I enjoyed it way too much.
Based on the 1959 novel by Robert A. Heinlein, the movie is about war, plain and simple. The premise has the Earth at war with alien bugs a couple of solar systems away. The Earth is a future Earth obviously overpopulated with a heavy distinction of what is a civilian and what is a citizen.
We follow the lives of a half-dozen college students (all Barbie and Ken lookalikes) as they enter various militia divisions and enter the war effort (which will give them citizenship). We follow their 90210 lives closely, completely enthralled in the drama unfolding between torn lovers (note: sarcasm) and their coping of the rigorous trials ahead of them (sarcasm again). The main character is Johnny Rico (a bad name, even by Saved by the Bell standards), who we focus on throughout as he first has his girlfriend (who can't keep her mouth shut -literally, it won't shut) torn away from him by a soap-opera actor and then has a crisis on the training field and is ready to quit the military.
Sadly (!?) his family gets all blown up by a meteor (sent by the alien bugs) and he goes to war. Here the acting stops and the movie starts as the special effects take over (thank god). If it wasn't for the full hour of non-stop special effects, blood-and-guts, and action, this movie would have been the crappiest piece of crap I ever did crap (as Homer would say). Literally, the entire final hour was nothing but non-stop action by way of damn good special effects which completely saved the movie. When Neil Patrick Harris (aka Doogie Houser) is the best actor in the film you know there's something wrong. Director Paul Verhoeven obviously blew his entire budget on special effects, and blew so very little on rejected-from-Baywatch-because-they-don't- have-the-acting-skills actors... which isn't a bad thing. I heard that it was either cool special effects with no acting or ehhhh (not a real word) special effects with soap star acting. I glad they went the right way.
As for the movie, aside from the acting, it was, well, disturbing. It wasn't the violence, nor the graphic violence, or even the extremely graphic violence, it was a few of the messages portrayed in the movie (which, from what I heard, is almost a straight adaptation of the book). There are scenes which definitely struck me as very Nazi-like, the soldiers saluting the flag row by row chief among them. As well as the ending scene where the aliens are proven to have human emotions and are then treated as guinae pigs was too... cold for my tastes. This movie is definitely not a thinking-man's movie, yet it deceptively poses the question, are we really the superior species? There were some good and well placed points of humour, but I think it would have been a much better movie if it were played like Space: Above and Beyond.
Is it worth watching? If you're looking for a good time, yes - just don't take anything away from it other than that. Please.