Galaxy Quest was infinitely superior

Rating: 4/10 (10 May 2013)

Apparently this is teenage Star Trek, in which the juvenile delinquents take over the starship "Enterprise"....
I am not a particular "Star Trek" fan - my main knowledge of the series was gained by encountering various tie-in novels while devouring the science fiction section of my local library, although I've probably seen half a dozen repeated episodes of the original TV series over the years and watched (and disliked) some of the earlier films when they first came out -- and I know very little about the subsequent spin-off series. All of which goes to say that I didn't have a vast amount of emotional investment to be overthrown when watching this film. I simply remembered that it got good reviews when it first came out, that I'd intended to watch it at the time but never got round to it, and that it might be a good idea to have a look at it now in case I actually wanted to watch the forthcoming sequel.
I was at least expecting decent entertainment...
This film is simply one long string of modern action-movie cliché from start to end, with frenetic camera-work, constant shoot-em-ups and/or punch-em-ups, fights over multi-level platforms (haven't I just seen this same sequence shoe-horned into "The Hobbit"?), supposedly emotional scenes that leave me absolutely untouched and not a little irked at the intended manipulation, and the insistence that any action marginally more intelligent than charging head-to-head with vastly more powerful baddies and hoping for a miracle is simply arrant cowardice. All of which would be bad enough (plus the truly lazy use of time-travel as a deus ex machina for some hand-waving technology), but which is accelerated past the stage of merely being bad science fiction and into the stage of being deeply annoying by the teenage cast.
Presumably this was an attempt to win the vital Young Adult (16-24) market -- however, the scenario where a bunch of space cadets are sent out to save the universe because, whoops, the rest of the navy isn't in port yet, really doesn't hold water. Let alone the scenario where all the famous characters just happen to be the same age and end up on the same ship -- funny, that -- so that the series can be 'rebooted' with a complete cast of photogenic crew members under the age of twenty-two. I may not know much about Star Trek history, but I do have some idea of naval organisation and the workings of seniority! As for Kirk, he is unbelievably annoying -- I felt like cheering when Spock had him thrown off the bridge and off the ship after behaviour that should have got him cashiered. The idea that this delinquent stowaway cadet could commit mutiny via grossly insulting his superior officer and be rewarded for it by appointing himself captain is not only ludicrous but offensive to the intelligence of the viewer: as another reviewer points out, even Dr McCoy was senior to Kirk at that point.
What is -- or should be -- deeply worrying is that "Galaxy Quest", written as a deliberate "Star Trek" spoof, is actually infinitely more effective as straight science fiction than this 'reboot' is. It is perhaps unsurprising that it is also much funnier (what jokes exist in this film tend to fail badly), but the producers should be seriously concerned that the so-called spoof is also far more emotionally involving, more heroic, more exciting, and more scientifically coherent. You actually care about what happens to that crew of washed-up actors and hapless aliens: they face real challenges, evolve real relationships and manage to eat their cake and have it while poking gentle fun at the nerds who ultimately help save the day.
As for this film -- well, I liked most of Spock and what little we saw of McCoy, hated Kirk, found the other 'canon' crew members pretty ridiculous and thought the plot was detestably silly. Again, as another reviewer says, you could plausibly have made it an 'origins' story for Kirk alone (though the character would still have been a complete pain in the neck), but attempting to assemble a complete juvenile version of the crew really stretches credibility. It wasn't just a bad blockbuster: it was a blockbuster that I deeply resented seeing.