A mixed bag; better than the weaker Trek movies but not one of the best.

Rating: 6/10 (11 October 2009)

Now, by no means is the 2009 iteration/reboot/alternate history of Star Trek a complete middle finger to Trek fans, as a lot of people reviewing this film seem to think. As an attentive but not obsessive fan I can say it has at least a little respect for the canon, although the philosophical questions/seeking out new life parts of the franchise are skipped in favour of flashy lens-flared action scenes. This will annoy the hardcore Trekkies, but to be honest these are things usually better handled in the episodes anyway. People go to the movies to be dazzled; with television they merely expect to be entertained.
The script/story isn't bad. There were a few loose threads that never really got tied, such as the time-dilation effect of Spock appearing 25 years after Nero even using the same wormhole, why young Kirk trashed a car, what the purpose of the Starfleet base on the ice world was other than a plot device to find Scotty, and - most jarring of all - what happened to the black hole created really near to Earth? But as the focus of the tale is making it an emotionally-charged epic and not worrying about realism, some of these can't be considered faults, merely realisation of the intentions of it's creators.
The applications of Trek staple "psuedo-science" were skipped in favour of a better plot, which worked sometimes but not always; obviously no-one working on this picture understands what a black hole actually is, let alone the impossibility that a dab of a mysterious liquid (creatively named red matter, nice job there) could create one on-the-fly. They certainly can't cause time-travel; that's usually attributed to a wormhole, I'm surprised no-one noticed such a glaring error. These were obviously skipped to keep the picture moving swiftly, to keep things fun and entertaining, and since the film never really drags it can be considered a modest success in this respect.
The cast has a couple of standouts: Chris Pine's Kirk carries the cocksure charm of the original, without resorting to copying Shatner's mannerisms and inflections, which I really appreciated and Spock, as played by Quinto, is given a lot more depth by a great performance. Both play conflicted men well and have probably set themselves up for their entire careers with this film. Bruce Greenwood makes the most of his Pike storyline, though I do wish he'd been given better dialogue to work with as he strikes me as the most believable Starfleet officer in this particular version. Nimoy's return as Spock Prime is enjoyable; though he does get a clunky, expositional monologue his prowess as an actor saves at least some of it; I think he sees the potential in this new approach to Trek.
Bones, Uhura, Scotty (and his Ewok-style mascot), Sulu and Chekov are misguided attempts to retain the campy humour and feel of the original series distilled into one-dimensional characters. I found all attempts at humour fell completely flat, with none of the actors able to master decent comic timing. Karl Urban is especially guilty; he tries too hard to copy DeForest Kelley instead of bringing his own personality to the show. This would still be a fun movie without the cheap jokes; the screen time could have been used for character development instead.
The CGI effects are uniformly excellent: all of the space battle shots and the exterior ship designs look great, from the fearsome appearance of the Romulan mining vessel to the sleek, guns-akimbo fighter-jet portrayal of the Enterprise. This made the space battles much more epic than your average Trek flick. The sets are good - I especially liked the bridge of the USS Kelvin, and the design of the Romulan vessel was superb internally - but some, like the brightly-lit sterile Enterprise bridge and the engineering section, which looked like a sewage treatment plant, do not fit a genre whose best moments are usually found in dark mood lighting.
There is no doubt that this picture is far, far better than the two weak TNG outings it followed - Insurrection and Nemesis - but it can't live up to the three best Star Trek films (The Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home and First Contact). It is, in some respects, another in a long line of action films that distracts from inconsistent pacing/scripting with impressive whizz-bang graphics and good-looking actors. It has the fun, feel-good appeal of an 80s film, but it also has some of the same superficiality, glossing over things that could have easily given the picture more depth and resonance. Something of a missed opportunity.