Solid Entertainment

Rating: 8/10 (17 July 2009)

Although I have always thoroughly enjoyed the series and followed it on and off through its different incarnations, I have never really been a devoted Trekker or mad fan. (I don't have any of the box-sets, I've never been to a convention and my Klingon is basic Leaving Cert.) This probably makes me the perfect audience for this film – someone who enjoys the franchise but not obsessively so. JJ Abrahms has been at pains to point out he was never a great follower of the show and has proudly boasted of his ignorance of much of its key history – he didn't know Spock was half human for example. This inevitably had the faithful up in arms when the project was announced – a bit like asking a Marxist atheist to make a film about the life of Christ! As it turns out the film has been embraced warmly by faithful and fickle alike – with the fundamentalist hold-outs forming a small minority. The original series never took itself seriously and neither does this film. It is first and foremost an entertainment designed for an audience not for a cult. Having said that it does not simply play it for laughs (although it is at times very, very funny) nor, thank God, does it ever descend into camp. It is brash, exciting, dramatic, fast-moving and just basically damn good. There are also a few sly winks to clichés of the series – the crew's first away mission involves Kirk; Sulu; McCoy and – Oleson. Guess what happens to Oleson. Also there is the thrill of seeing the various long established characters at their first appearance – "Hi I'm Chekhov"; "Hi I'm Captain Pike" etc. and the fun of comparing these young actor's interpretation of roles we're so familiar with in their later incarnations. Karl Urban's Bones McCoy is uncanny while Simon Pegg's Scotty is nothing like James Doohan's (his Scottish accent is too realistic) but still a great character creation in its own right. The film is lifted up also by the appearance of fairly heavy-weight actors in small but significant cameos – Ben Cross; Bruce Greenwood; Winona Ryder ("Hi I'm Mammy Spock") and of course Leonard Nimoy is in their too.