Doesn't live up to the hype

Rating: 5/10 (8 May 2009)

The guy who plays Kirk kind of looks like James Dean. He is brash and cocky, as you'd expect, and annoyingly arrogant (but that's his character). Zachary Quinto makes a good Spock. Leonard Nimoy seems to use the same dentist as Mr Ed did.
Naturally, there are lots of very good special effects. Uhura still dresses like a go-go dancer, and the men still wear those shirts with the padded shoulders (a la STTNG). Eddie Murphy will be amused to know that Kirk still doesn't get to ravish the green alien. Red shirts are still unsafe to wear.
At one stage, the Captain handed off command to Spock, who handed off to Kirk, who handed off to Uhura, who handed off to someone else, to sit in the Captain's chair. I was half-expecting to see the cleaning lady end up there.
I guess it was their attempt at humour to have a red-shirt die.
It always amused me how these kind of films have characters who are fascinated with our particular time in history and its accoutrements. Someone from hundreds of years in the future driving one of our cars would be kind of like us riding around in chariots. Kirk the kid driving around was simply a brat.
The concept of someone in their 20s becoming captain of a ship after a single mission, is something right out of The Young and the Restless (where the gardener can become CEO of a conglomerate in a short span of time).
I've gone to see other movies that I wasn't looking forward to - Start Trek IV rings a bell - and ended up enjoying it. This one, full of ST clichés, doesn't fall into that category at all. This film is not "great", as some have claimed, if you look at it as a non-Trekkie with your blinders off. In fact, I struggled to recall details to write this. It's that forgettable.
However, those who blindly love ST no matter what, should be pleased that Paramount has found yet another ST franchise with which to part them and their cash.