Sterling Home Entertainment claims it spent $27 million on Space Truckers, and the special effects certainly are superior for a non-theatrical science fiction action film. The space visuals, which range from the rig and the vast pirate ship to black asteroids that look like huge clumps of onyx, are good and in places striking (at least on the small screen), and the cybernetic warriors are appropriately fearsome. Other efforts are less successful--in particular the half-hearted effort to simulate weightlessness aboard John's rig.

Hopper works hard to keep his scenes interesting. What credibility the film earns from Hopper's professionalism, however, is quickly snatched away by Mazar's one-note performance. In fairness, Mazar is little aided by a script and direction that deprive her of any motivation beyond "I'll do anything to get to Earth" (where her mother is laid up). Dorff neither adds nor subtracts, delivering his lines with Gen-X rebelliousness and doffing his shirt on cue.

Any movie called Space Truckers ought to have fun with itself, and indeed there are good jokes and sight gags here and there, though some are a little problematic. For example, Cindy is willing to bed the hideous captain (she just has to get home to see her mom), and in the bedroom scene it turns out that his rebuilt reproductive organs have a lawn-mower pull-start. Yet as much fun as this is, it repudiates the scene's considerable tension and replaces it with a Howard the Duck ridiculousness.

The science fiction film universe is sharply divided between big epic films and little actioners, and in places Space Truckers stands with its box-office brethren in the latter camp (there's slightly more plot here than in Starship Troopers, for instance). Although it won't live down through the ages, it might fill a dull Tuesday night.