Incoherent, sexist mess - for kiddies only

Rating: 5/10 (17 May 2009)

I'm sure the kids under the age of 25 will love this to death, but color this 40something unimpressed. More tired JJ Abrams tropes, complete with idiotic time travel laziness; at times I felt like I was watching an episode of LOST. Terrible Michael Giacchino music... as usual, he pours on the treacle during the (allegedly) "quiet" scenes.
And the one female character who gets any screen time (and isn't killed off) is Uhura, who has somehow become conflated with Nurse Chapel. (Remember, girls, it's not enough that you're smart in the 22nd century; you have to be HAWT as well. Women are part of the Abrams Star Trek world only to give birth, be slept with, or killed. You've come a LONG way baby!) The scenes between her and Spock were beyond embarrassing, and I kept hoping the Enterprise would fall into a black hole at the end so that they would enter a different time stream and that whole "history" between them would be erased. Sadly, JJ Abrams decided not to arbitrarily use time travel for that. More's the pity.
I was unmoved by the extended Leonard Nimoy appearance (more than a cameo, and awkwardly so) and especially by the "moving" voice-over at the end... which was already done (much better) in STAR TREK II.
That said...
...the cast was EXCELLENT. You could not have hoped for a better Mr. Spock than Zach Quinto (the ONLY reason why I would ever consider seeing a second go-round of this Trek revival), Karl Urban was terrific (and under used) as McCoy, loved the guys playing Sulu and Chekhov (although again, why was Chekhov conflated with Wesley Crusher? UNNECESSARY!). Not as impressed with Chris Pine as Kirk but given the tiresome limitations of his character (wow, Kirk is arrogant, we GET it already) I suppose he did all right.
If only I could erase the memory of the transporter room scene with Spock and Uhura ... I might be able to give this movie 2 more points. Sadly, no.