Chris Pine, your mouth is ajar...

Rating: 7/10 (29 September 2009)

I really wanted to love this movie, and after hearing many great reviews from friends and acquaintances i readied myself for a killer ride. I'll put it this way: You know how a great ride at an amusement park can be ruined by the wrong person sitting next to you? That's kind of how i feel about having Chris Pine portray James Kirk. First off, his voice has an almost cartoonish sound to it, kind of like "Shaggy" in the original Scooby Doo. Additionally, while most of the other actors go out of their way to infuse the soul of the original actor into their portrayals, Pine gives no effort whatsoever to do the same for William Shatner. The only thing he shares with Shatner is the tendency to overact. Every scene seems just a little too far over the top, whether it's for the sake of comedy or for the sake of drama. This guy seems out of his league in this role. The rest of the crew is well cast for the most part, even though Simon Pegg as "Scotty" also goes a little overboard at times. McCoy (Karl Urban) and Spock (Zac Quinto) are great, and Zoe Saldana as "Uhura" is a fox and plays an extremely sexy geek. She steals the scene whenever she's on camera. Eric Bana is a tremendous villain, and it's a testament to his acting that i didn't even realize it was him at first.
It seems to me that CG special effects have gotten to the point where I almost tune them out nowadays; the over-the-top action combined with predictable conclusions make some of these fight sequences almost tedious. I guess back in the day when they had model builders and cameramen who were struggling to get the shots, a sharper editorial sense was needed, and this was a bonus for the films in most cases. Nowadays it seems they trivialize the action by having too many things occur simultaneously, or by having things occur which are too far-fetched, and break you out of your suspension of disbelief.
Overall, it is a fun movie with lots of great action and some pretty good acting, but Chris Pine just spoiled it for me. From his voice to his mouth always hanging wide open as he searches for oxygen to feed his enormous dome (one fitting moment has Uhura referring to him as "the mouth-breather"), the ride just wasn't as fun with him overacting next to me.