If you’re like me, you still harbour dreams of NHL scouts drafting you from your Wednesday night beer league, you miss the McPizza (or for les Quebecois among you, “le McPizza“), and you have grave regrets about your “career” choice on an almost hourly basis. Also, you love science fiction movies (and midget porn, which is in many ways similar to science fiction…) 

The latest science fiction (or “sci-fi”, as it is known in the biz) release to take the BiMonSciFiCon by storm is District 9. Apparently it is fantastic. I wouldn’t know. I didn’t go to see it. Instead, I chose to sit on my couch and re-watch The Last Starfighter, having convinced myself that it would be just as good and would require far less effort. I was 50% right.

I should preface this discussion by confessing that I LOVED The Last Starfighter when I was a kid. After all, who’s NOT a fan of Lance Guest? For those who (a) lived a sheltered childhood, or (b) were born in the 1980s, The Last Starfighter is the thrilling tale of a young Alex Rogan who becomes the last starfighter in the galaxy (hence the title, I suspect) after unwittingly completing a recruitment module disguised as a videogame entitled “Starfighter”. It was cross-marketing at its finest - a movie about a videogame, that subsequently spawned a video game about the movie. It was also one of the first films in history (together with Tron) to use CGI. On that theory alone, I assumed it would stand up to a re-watch two and a half decades later. I was wrong.

The movie starts out as your typical teenage love story: boy meets girl who lives next to him in a trailer park. Boy excels at a videogame, and gets recruited to assist in an inter-stellar battle for the universe by an alien in a fedora and a (slightly) modified DeLorean. Boy leaves behind alien clone (”Beta Alex”) to ensure that his absence goes unnoticed by his friends and family at the trailer park. Apparently gay clone rebuffs sexual advances by trailer trash girlfriend. Meanwhile, boy somehow becomes the last starfighter in the galaxy and single-handedly destroys the invading alien hordes (with the assistance of his star navigator, Grig, who bears a striking resemblance to the alien in Enemy Mine… Don’t look at me like that - we were all thinking it). Boy eventually returns to the trailer park, kidnaps trailer trash girlfriend, and heads back to space to kick some alien ass. The only thing missing was an appearance by Poochie.

In any event, on re-watching this gem, I have to admit that it wasn’t quite what I had hoped / remembered. CGI apparently has come a long way since 1984. Also, so has acting and screenwriting. Then again, what the hell do I know? After all, it was good enough for an off-Broadway musical adaptation in 2004… In fact, if you do nothing else today, PLEASE go to the website for “The Last Starfighter - A New Musical, Cast Recording“ and rock out to some of the musical offerings from Skip Kennon. Seriously. It will change your life.

My personal favourites:

• Starlite, Starbrite
• Somebody, Somewhere, Something (containing the insightful lines “I’ve gotta be somebody who goes somewhere and does something…” - Skip’s life motto, apparently)
• Zandozan! (how could it be bad with the following intro: “I was having the bitchingist dream, me o my, Miss July, sittin’ on the sofa”)

In conclusion, while the movie may not hold up as well as I had hoped, it has fostered in me a new-found love for off-Broadway musicals. Thank you, Lance Guest. You truly are the Last Starfighter…