Made me feel fifteen again

Rating: 8/10 (1 July 2013)

As a Star Trek movie, this works as well as when I was fifteen and tried to pick up girls by telling them I thought they looked great. I'm not saying the movie is embarrassingly obvious in trying to flirt with you, but as I watch it, with my brain even semi-alert, scene after scene of "does the director really think I'm that stupid" washes over me.
Luckily I snuck a couple of beers into the theater with me so things got better. The action is great, the leads look cool, the fleeting flash of bare flesh feels fittingly flush with the superficial feel of the flick. Things explode. People run around, and sometimes die. It works, as a hipster version of Michael Bay.
There's something satisfying in being forced to regress to fifteen again, which is why I give this film 8 out of ten. I sincerely enjoyed it, despite the endless parade of "what the hecks" the adult part of my brain was making.
Why do they show levitating machines in the hospital, and then a forklift truck in the bunker? How does someone sneak high explosives into the top security facility... did we ban the TSA in the future? When did London move to the San Francisco bay. Scotty invents a portable device that can beam Khan halfway across the galaxy to the surface of a planet but they can't beam Spock out of a volcano because they have no line of sight? Seriously? And I thought Khan was... browner.
They land in the Dead Zone but the buildings still have lights on. How exactly did so many Klingon ships find them so fast? The Klingon warriors wear heavy armor but don't carry any kind of guns, only swords. Then more Klingons arrive, and they all have guns. Random aliens appear randomly, playing no role except to make me feel this is a Star Trek movie. Uhura's earpiece appears randomly, just like the aliens. Also, how does it stay in her ear, and why is it ten times the size of a prehistoric Bluetooth headset? Seriously, it's HUGE!
The future has no robots? Not even one? First they establish that they can't beam anyone up. They then forget that conversation and again establish that they can't beam anyone up. What mysterious force keeps throwing the Enterprise in all directions whenever its power fails? Kirk dies and Spock cries. Cries? Is this how grown men act? Must keep that in mind for when I grow up. When they fly off into the sunset, zombie Kirk doesn't choose a destination. How does Chekov know where to take them? All the planets in the closing credits look about one yard across.
Yeah, I was traumatized to remember this whole list of bugs in the movie. That makes it something special. A movie this flawed and yet this enjoyable can only mean I was way, way too drunk the whole time.