My love / hate relationship with this movie

Rating: 7/10 (2 June 2013)

While I will attempt to avoid spoilers, I am flagging my review just in case.
This is essentially the second JJ Abrams vehicle I've ever watched. I saw a few episodes of Lost, but was never a fan. On the other hand, I wholly loved the Star Trek reboot. The casting was magnificent, and the chemistry of the characters is completely intact.
Having grown up with the series and the original movies, I have still managed to adjust to the alternate universe. I am a fan, and I wholly endorse the idea. Conceptually, it's wonderful to almost recreate the "What if" scenario from Marvel comics? What if Spock had a love interest? What if Captain Pike had lived? These ideas and more are all being explored in the new Star Trek universe.
As a franchise, one of the concepts that has always made is special for me is the plausibility. Within this universe, there are races and species of all kinds. It's a given that a starship with this special crew does what it does. The science is acceptable. Some of it has even become reality! This is where my love / hate shifts slightly to hate, but not completely. More like dislike with a bitter aftertaste.
I was transfixed while watching this movie. I saw women with hands to their faces during some of the action sequences, riveted to the screen. It was amazing.
****Spoilers follow*****
While I was on the fence about using Khan in this way, I was good with it. The fact is, when you have seen Ricardo Montalban in this role, it's hard to adjust to a new concept, despite how good the actor is, and this one was brilliant.
The movie started to lose me late in the game. At some point, instead of climbing the to the top of the mountain of action sequences, they should have known where to level off. In Star Trek II, the scene in which Spock saves the ship is wholly believable. In watching it, all one can do is just marvel at the scene. In the new movie, the saving of the ship is ratcheted up a notch as Kirk doesn't just race to fix an important component of the ship, he somehow knows where this thing is he is looking for, and manages to kick into place an object that I would assume weighs thousands of pounds and is mostly likely heavily bolted into place, even if jarred temporarily.
Having gotten past this, I was settling back in when Spock beamed down to chase Khan. Again, this was a good scene to start, and then it too went way over the top. Had these scenes been in nearly any other movie, I would be fine, but they just don't belong in star trek.
That having been said, the movie is still worth watching, and it's wonderful to see so much attention being given to this set of characters. I think the actors are all doing a phenomenal job, and the writing is top notch as well.
Whether you are a new fan or a long time fan, you'll find much to make you happy here. Unfortunately, if you are a long time fan, there are more than a few concepts here you're just going to have to overlook. If the next movie follows this pattern, I think I'll pass and just pop in a DVD of one of the originals. In this age of special effects and fast paced action sequences, it's nice to sometimes go back to a time when special effects enhanced a movie, they didn't define it.
And be prepared. If memory serves, this movie consists of a LOT of close ups, and more than a few lens flares thrown in for style. The lens flares are an interesting touch, but they work.
I would have rated this movie another star or two had it not been for the two scenes I mentioned. They really hurt an otherwise wonderful movie for me.