Ladies and gentlemen, it's a comedy!

Rating: Null/10 (23 May 2009)

Thank 'Galaxy Quest'!
The previous Star Dreck movies and shows were so straight they were funny only in a forced manner or accidentally. I really liked the spatula on the holo-deck circuit in DS9 and Data's cat in Star Dreck: The next regurgitation, but those were few and far between. The new Star Trek movie does not take itself seriously. It avoids self-parody because it has an internal logic that this pile of children are not normal. Not a single one of them. They are the misfits of the Academy. Stuck on a normal ship, they would be bored or court-martialed. With Captain Jerk as their boss, they have room to breath and all of space to goof off in. It is a winner because it is not afraid to lose a few points in the seriousness category. "Star Wars: The beginning of the agony" had all those wonderful toys and a buncha characters who looked like they just got them for Christmas and couldn't read the manual. Each episode in the canon became more and more dire in it's seriousness, with even Yoda finally looking like he really needed a bong hit. The Mattress movies with Keanu whats-his-face had a deadly morose quality to them that made you want to view any landline phones with suspicion and guys with suits and sunglasses with fear, as well as your own computer with paranoia. "Star Trek" treats "future" technology as just one more gag. Even when Spork mark 2 has to fly Spork Prime's fancy gyro-ship, it is with a gleam in his eye and a smile on his face, not to mention a cock of the eyebrow as he utters,"Fascinating!"
"Galaxy Quest" took the mickey out of all that bombast and circumstance, including the fanboy mania. "Fifth Element" made space fun again and a fast-paced, multi-location narrative something to enjoy. "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" set up a series of gags and knocked them down like dominoes, including it's own iconic usefulness. "Star Trek" deals with death, sex, birth, planetary destruction and personality conflicts as just part of life, instead of making an Ibsen play out of them. Shakespeare would love the way dire consequences that would cause normal people to fall back on tradition and training instead inspire this group of geniuses to improvise and hang the consequences.
This "Star Trek" hasn't seen the limits of its stars or its scriptwriters. They are nascent, ripe for further silliness. I hope the next film is called "Star Trek: You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet".