Liked it quite a bit, didn't love it

Rating: 5/10 (28 May 2009)

As I get older, there are two things that can derail a movie for me: extreme excess (i.e. too much) and poorly-explained plot points (i.e. too little).
I liked the movie quite a bit, I thought the actors were great (Bones and Scotty especially) and the action scenes were exciting.
I was concerned when I saw the Romulan ship at the beginning, it wasn't just big, it was the biggest, meanest, pointiest, sharpest, least cuddly ship that ever existed. When I see something like this, I get worried because I think the whole movie is going to be like this, i.e. overblown and excessive to the nth degree. Peter Jackson's "King Kong" was like that and I hated it.
Fortunately, the movie DIDN'T proceed along those lines, it didn't just rely totally on just being excessive. For the first time, we get to meet the characters that we've known for 40 years and it was fun to see them as younger people.
The plot point that I found poorly explained was when older Spock shows up. He tells us about an attempt to help the Romulans that results in the destruction of their planet (causing Spock and Nero's ship to be pulled back in time, thereby starting everything that we've already seen). I didn't understand any of the red matter/black hole stuff. Spock's explanation was raced through, quickly dashed-off and felt shoehorned. If I were able to rewind it and hear it again, that would have been helpful.
The divergences from the Star Trek universe that we've always known bothered me too. Uhura and Spock making out so much. Traditionally Spock was conflicted about his dual nature, he was always trying to keep his emotions in check. Here he's a light switch: completely logical one minute, completely emotional the next. Just because the Romulans went back in time and changed Kirk's life, there's no reason it would necessarily have any affects on Spock. The other things that bothered me were Vulcan being destroyed and Spock's mother dying. If they don't fix these things in the next movie, I'm going to be very cross. :) Repeated viewings might fix a lot of the problems I had with the movie. But if the audience doesn't understand the story you're trying to tell the first time, it's probably not the audience's fault.
Update (11/18/09): I watched this again last night and I DID like it better than the first time (I was able to follow the story better without any pre-conceptions) however what bothered me the first time still bothers me now.
Spock Prime's actions with the red matter didn't cause Romulus's destruction, couldn't have prevented it and were completely unnecessary. The script requires him to release the red matter so he and Nero can go back in time but Nero's need for revenge is completely baseless since Spock didn't cause Romulus's destruction.
Young Spock's behavior with Uhura is just completely out-of-character. In TOS, Spock's emotional outbursts were lapses of logic not an integrated part of his personality. His behavior would not be affected whatsoever by Nero going back in time and changing Kirk's life.
If Spock Prime was close enough to witness the destruction of Vulcan from Delta Vega, wouldn't that outpost be sucked in by the singularity too? It was all too convenient that Spock, Kirk and Scotty would have all been on the same outpost at the same time. I doubt that Young Spock would have jettisoned Kirk onto that moon anyway.
The problem the first time was that these thoughts were preventing me from seeing other nuances that were good. On second viewing, it was an imperfect story told well.