Rubbish

Rating: 1/10 (16 May 2009)

The story is a pathetic amalgam of the "big thing appears near earth" story that has been used in at least three previous Treks, a bunch of scenes from the various TV series done worse and a load of filler that I think was shot by Michael Bay but he didn't want it because it was too stupid.
The actors who play the adult Kirk and Spock are both good if you ignore the story and script they have to work with. Both look the parts and carry them surprisingly well. The less said about their kid versions the better, but let's just say young Anakin looks a lot better in this light.
The rest of the cast are either horribly mis-cast (Simon Pegg), instantly forgettable or just plain horrible (Uhura).
By and large the action/sfx scenes reminded me mostly of the end of Armageddon - shiny drivel that makes you want to punch people in the neck. The first ten minutes epitomises this (slight spoiler but you won't miss anything, the film has no surprises in it) : teeny tiny research ship vs huge planet-killing machine from a vastly more advanced race AND 150 years in the future, the smaller ship is so boned by the first 5 seconds of the fight, during which the baddies don't even really try, that it's evacuated. It is then flown in a dead straight line at the enemy guns for about 90 seconds with no shields, no defences and no evasive manoeuvres. Despite this it is somehow unharmed and it's pilot manages to happily converse with his wife by radio while presumably the conversation aboard the enemy ship goes something like "I think he's going to ram us sir", "oh?", "shall we do something?", "shoot wildly over his head", "yes sir"..... time passes.... "he's still coming sir, very very slowly", "oh well shoot more just don't hit him that would spoil the moment". I'm sure Futurama had almost this exact scene but it was a joke when they did it.....
It's this kind of lazy, tired, pathetic trash that I expected from Abrams and he delivers it in spades. The whole film is saturated with laziness from top to bottom. Given that the Trek franchise invented and then flogged to death most of the great clichés of sci-fi you might think this is all just tongue-in-cheek homage but it really isn't, this is the best this hackneyed joke of a director has to offer and you can tell he honestly thinks it doesn't stink. The pinnacle of this laziness has to be "Red matter" which is probably the worst McGuffin in the history of cinema. Oh yes and let's not forget that the entire plot hinges on the premise that Spock (something of an icon for learning) has never heard of "velocity equals distance over time".
All of this is from a purely non-Trek perspective. I could point out no end of issues on that front (Cardassians in Kirk's era, Ships built on the surface of the planet, everything about Pike, one of the most advanced species in the galaxy defeated by a ship whose main weapon is a 10 mile long undefended phallus which takes a week to shoot it's load, etc. etc. etc.).