What's this? A good Star Trek movie?

Rating: 7/10 (12 December 2011)

(www.plasticpals.com) I was never a huge fan of the original TV series from which this remake takes its inspiration. I'm more of a Next Generation kind of guy, which I watched religiously every weeknight during junior high. In my view the original series survives mostly on camp and the rare, well-written episodes that made a statement of sorts. But there's no denying that the crew of the original Enterprise have become ingrained in the pop-cultural subconscious due to their archetypal characterizations. So the remake probably shouldn't have come as much of a surprise to me, though it did catch me off guard as a fan of The Next Generation, whose cast members are all alive and well, and fully capable of doing a new movie in that series.
J.J. Abrams made it abundantly clear in his press interviews leading up to its release that Star Trek wasn't trying to appeal to the hardcore trekkers. You know the ones: the kind you see dressed as Klingons at comic conventions that get humiliated mercilessly by Triumph the insult-comic dog, and parodied on The Simpsons. No, he insisted, this Star Trek was made for the every man, the casual moviegoer looking for an entertaining sci-fi flick. And I think he succeeded.
So bravo, J.J., for rebooting a series the right way unlike, say, the wholly abominable Terminator 3 (of which I will never speak again) or the X-files sequel. There's very little I would change about Star Trek, except for the obnoxiously way over the top chase sequence starring a young, rebellious Jimmy Kirk, the curiously bare-naked alien (living in extreme arctic conditions) or the silly and totally predictable final challenge to the Enterprise. And there's no robots. But these are minor quibbles, really. Hell, I was so absorbed that I didn't even recognize Eric Bana (playing the principal villain). Oh, and lest I forget, Uhura has never looked so good.
Despite playing with the series canon, I don't think too many fans will reject the changes given Leonard Nimoy's unabashed "passing of the torch".
So definitely check it out.