What a circus! A sappy distortion of the original Star Trek story.

Rating: 4/10 (9 May 2009)

Mr. Spock, where are you when we need you because you definitely are not in this movie. And as for Captain Kirk, a heroic if somewhat temperamental character has now been reduced to a mere caricature of a caricature, except this new caricature is so dumb that it baffles the mind as to how anyone could actually believe that such a dolt could be passed off as a hero. In this blotted version of Star Trek, the ship has been transformed into a glossy and poorly run whinery. Yes ... WHINERY ... that is a place where everyone whines. The complaining never stops. What do they want? They have good jobs, rank, authority, and are millions of light years away from headquarters and sanity. Their problem is that they pick a fight with a much stronger, tougher, smarter and better organized opponent who has a legitimate gripe against the Federation, particularly Mr. Spock who undergoes some kind of time warp schism that defies every known and probably every unknown law of physics, not to mention common sense. But what is even worse, the movie isn't even campy, it's just plain dumb. The USS Enterprise would not have last five seconds against the Alien or Predator. Darth Vader would have had a field day against Kirk and company. Ming the Merciless would have made short shrift out of the hapless crew from the Federation. Starship Troopers would have put the Enterprise in mothballs.
If a spacecraft is capable of demolishing a planet, then why would anyone believe that a starship could defeat that spacecraft? This movie defies all logic as it asks the audience to believe what is patently absurd, such as the Enterprise being able to destroy a planet killer or the scene in which Mr. Spock is having a conversation with himself. No, not talking to himself, rather talking WITH himself, the same person, two bodies. Move over Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. The producers of Star Trek have discovered new laws of physics. This is not to suggest, however, that the movie is all bad. Far from from it. Although muddled, the story does move at a rapid pace, with lots of special effects, lots of noise, lots of fighting, with things blowing up, planets being sucked dry, some good dialogue, a solid performance by Zachary Quinto as Mister Spock (the younger), a stabilizing presence by Leonard Nimoy as Mister Spock (the older), and strong performance by Eric Bana as the bad guy, who, if this movie had a credible story, would have whipped Kirk and Spock's butts in about ten seconds (but then there would have been no movie). But the most yucky feature of this sappy distortion of the original Star Trek story is the love relationship between the half-human Mister Spock, who has a whole bunch of personal problems so acute that it would have even made the most insensitive dolt think twice before having anything to do with him, and Ms. Uhuru who looks and acts like a teenage girl. Ms. Uhuru: News Flash! Mister Spock is a wreck! Also, whatever happened to those vaunted shields that in the television show always protected the ship from harm? In this movie the shields are about as effective as paper-mache as the Enterprise is strafed, bombed, rocketed, smashed, tossed, toppled, and shaken like a baby's toy. Rarely, if ever, in the annals of Hollywood movies has a hero spaceship been more beat up. By any standard of movie story telling, the Enterprise should have ceased to exist. Indeed, the Enterprise should have disappeared after its very first encounter with the bad guy ship, so outclassed was it in terms of size, firepower and intelligence. And who could figure out exactly who was the Captain? There was constant bickering over who was in command. First Pike, then Spock, then Kirk, then back to Pike. What a circus! This movie was more reminiscent of McHale's Navy or F Troop. The Enterprise would have done better with Captain Parmenter, Sergeant O'Rourke and Corporal Agarn in command, or better yet, Captain Wally Binghamton and Ensign Charles Parker. Now THEY were the type of hapless Hollywood buffoons who would have fit in perfectly in this sfx-laden, pompous piece of celluloid which is called Star Trek.
An afterword: Two of the more annoying characters in this movie are Doctor McCoy and Engineer Scotty. It is highly doubtful that there are any two characters in any Hollywood movie that are more whiny and shrill-sounding than these two nincompoops. Now, in the TV series, these characters are temperamental but not stupid. However, this movie makes them temperamental AND stupid. They make the late Lou Costello sound like Clark Gable. In fact, this movie would have worked much better if the actual Bud and Lou had played Kirk and Spock.
In this movie, The Enterprise fighting the bad guy space ship would be like a badly sailed row boat going up against the largest aircraft carrier in the world, commanded by a crew of highly motivated, well-organized, merciless fanatics and bristling with planes, rockets and other highly lethal weapons, and the row boat not only winning but completely obliterating the aircraft carrier. Duh! ... Duh! ... DUH!!!!!!
Actually, this movie might have worked better if Spock and Kirk became the bad guys, playing disgruntled renegade Star Fleet officers who steal the Enterprise, convert it into a pirate ship and then try to shake down the entire Federation, threatening to destroy the universe with a secret, but unnamed, super weapon, that can make a real mess of everything. One other point: for a Vulcan, Spock is a disappointment. In this movie he is more skittish than a young teenage girl on the eve of her first prom with her first date. Spock, Kirk, Uhuru, the whole bunch of them, are so laughable that it gives one cause to believe that maybe this movie was supposed to be a comedy.