The Last Starfighter - review

Warp Speed to Nostalgia!

The eighties were the decade of my awkward transition from teenager to adulthood.  Video games, sci-fi movies, girls, acne and weird feelings, what a time to be alive!  I lived a good portion of that time in arcades because my raging hormones could be momentarily drowned out by the roar of 8-bit music and the rush of playing my personal favorite coin-op, Bally’s Wizard of Wor.

I loved video games, still do, and “The Last Starfighter” is one of the few movies that manages to successfully use video games as a jumping off point for a delightful story.

While not a Steven Spielberg film, “The Last Starfighter” certainly reflects his influence in its glorification of homespun nostalgia.  The story is absurdly simple and simply absurd, but it succeeds largely because of the earnest performances of the actors, who make the drama ring true and the comedy sparkle with a heaping helping of old-fashioned, aw-shucks enthusiasm.  This sentimentality is difficult to resist because “The Last Starfighter” is just so happy to be a movie!

Lanky but charming Lance Guest plays Alex Rogan, a young man who feels trapped in the trailer park where he lives with his mom and little brother, doing handyman chores for the aging residents.  Alex has a steady girlfriend, but he wants more from life than necking by the lake in a sleeping bag.  He dreams of escaping to college, but when Alex's school loan is denied, he is crushed by the thought of being consigned to replace fuses and erect TV antennas but never see the big wide world outside his little desert valley.

To distract himself, Alex plays a newly arrived video game at the trailer park’s general store.  The machine turns out to be a recruitment tool sent by an intergalactic huckster named Centauri, played by the delightfully hammy Robert Preston.  When Alex beats the game, Centauri appears and offers Alex the chance to actually escape the trailer park, but that choice involves risking his life as a real star pilot in an actual war!  At first Alex balks at this responsibility, but danger at home compels him to make the leap into the great beyond.

CGI was still in its nascent stage, but the visual effects in “The Last Starfighter” hold up quite well, due in large part to the brilliant production design by Ron Cobb.  Despite the modest computing power of this era’s processors, the Gunstar spaceship that Alex commands is a unique and nicely detailed design.  The dogfight action is very well-composed and edited, and Craig Safan’s rousing score soars through it all, keeping our spirits flying along with Alex as he battles seemingly impossible odds.

The supporting cast is wonderful across the board.  Catherine Mary Stuart plays Maggie, Alex’s sweetheart, and her girl-next-door looks, luminous eyes and sweet yet sexy demeanor make her instantly adorable.  Alex’s little brother Louis, played by Chris Hebert, adds a lot of humor without feeling one-dimensional, and all the denizens of the trailer park are distinct even though they don’t have much screen time.  These background characters may feel a bit stereotypical, but this kind of cinematic shorthand is still done with genuine affection.

“The Last Starfighter” is a mighty cornball of clichés.  An unabashed celebration of can-do attitude, romance and adventure which might seem mawkish to those with hardened hearts, but I find its schmaltz to be utterly appealing and infectious.  It’s a love letter to youth in all its optimism, aspirations and starry-eyed wonder.  If you have ever looked up at the night sky and dreamed of cosmic adventure, then “The Last Starfighter” is your ticket to a trip back in time for a vision of the future, eighties-style!