Accessible for all! Fun and enjoyable.

Rating: 9/10 (19 May 2013)

Right off the bat, if you're reading this review to find bitter complaints from an equally-as-bitter fan, you won't find them here.
I loved the film! What I saw, and thoroughly enjoyed, was a resurgence of the quirky series of Star Trek, Next Gen, and DS9. To be honest, I thought the franchise was ruined with that awful Voyager series and was only vaguely revived with the short-lived Enterprise.
Star Trek has NEVER been a serious franchise. Ever. It has always had an underlying feeling of cheesiness and quirk - that is what I have always enjoyed about it.
It's space and science fiction and adventure. If I want serious aliens, I'll watch Alien!
Now... the movie itself, again, it was brilliantly cast. Simon Pegg is a stand-out character this time around, brilliant as Scotty and gets all the best lines of the entire film. Chris Pine as Kirk is still the sex-mad hot head that he always was in the original series. Spock (Zachary Quinto) is still infuriatingly logical and rule-driven. Bones (Karl Urban) is still as grouchy as ever he was. The young Khan/Harrison is played to perfection by Benedict Cumberbatch - the man does the cryptic evil dude very, very well and his voice oozes malice. A perfect choice as far as I am concerned.
It's my feeling that JJ Abrams has kept to the Star Trek cannon as much as possible while bringing the back story of these characters to life as well as also trying to appeal to the new fans of the franchise.
The film may have been a little heavy on the action scenes at times however they were all enjoyable. Probably the only scene that I thought was tedious but a necessary evil was the crew's adventure to Kronos. It was too obvious for a Klingon "patrol" ship to be floating around an area that's completely uninhabited except for ONE life form - that of Khan - when our heroes show up to do Star Fleet's dirty work. I feel that could have been done much better in a different way.
Overall, however, I thoroughly enjoyed it a heck of a lot more than I thought I would. I've been dragged kicking and screaming into the franchise because I am surrounded by Trekkies (married to one, parents are, etc, etc) so I've learned to like much of it. As someone who is familiar with the cannon, I was not disappointed.