Better than I expected.

Rating: 8/10 (8 May 2009)

I really went into Star Trek, not wanting to like it.
However, to give the devil his due, Abrams really did capture the essence of the characters, and even expands on some of them.
There's not a lot new here. We have time travel, we have a ranting Khan-like villain. We have the obligatory red shirt buying it. The characters do the things we expect them to do. In many ways, this is a "the crew comes together film" that the Original Series never had but all four sequel series inflicted upon us.
Let's evaluate the characters-
Chris Pine as Kirk. Actually, a pretty solid performance. He comes off as this rebellious guy who wins because he doesn't always play by the rules. He does the unexpected, he takes chances. You really believe he's a young Shatner.
Quinto as Spock- He actually had me convinced he was a younger Leonard Nimoy. (And the two actors together fit almost seamlessly.) He really recreates the mystique of Nimoy's original presentation and all the faux-Vulcans we've seen in subsequent series lacked.
Karl Urban as Dr. McCoy. He's actually pretty decent. If there's a fault, it's that we don't see more of him.
Simon Pegg as Scotty - Pegg is a great comic actor, and he brings that comic frustration to his version of Scotty.
The gal who played Uhura – Really pretty, they give her more depth and personality than she ever had in the series (as Spock's love interest, no less!) They make her a linguist, which gives her more to do than "Hailing Frequencie Open."
Bruce Davison as Christopher Pike- I hope that Admiral Pike appears in the sequels, I really like his character.
Now the ones that don't work so well- the guys who played Sulu and Chekov. Their characters were always interchangeable on the series, and here they were largely dispensable.
Eric Bana as Nero I think in some ways he's channeling Ricardo Montalban, but you never get the feeling he's into it.
SPOILER - There are things I didn't like, such as destroying Vulcan (and wiping out most Vulcans) and creating a separate time line where presumably, most of the Original Series, Next Generation and Deep Space Nine never happened. (On the brighter side, neither did Voyager! Enterprise appears to be part of the continuum, though!) I think Abrams felt he needed to up the ante, but I think he went to far on that plot point.
Some things are over the top. This new Enterprise is HUGE judging by the sets (which strikes me as impractical) and the Romulan Ship even bigger. (Seriously, why would a mining barge be armed like a dreadnought?) I think it suffers from Blockbuster Syndrome, where they do all these things that really shock and awe on the big screen, but won't look nearly as impressive the third time you've seen it on DVD.
Heroic or not, promoting Kirk from Cadet to Captain at the end? That seems, well, improbable.