STAR TREK: REVIEW

Nerds rejoice: Space is fun again.

I'm serious. Space, and by space I mean lots of ships flying through it very quickly, hasn’t been for fun years. I don’t mean just Star Trek movies. Think about it: Star Wars I-III. Alien vs. Predator I and II. Wing *shudder* Commander. By my count, the last good space movie was The Fifth Element. That was in 1996. There’s been a lot of pain in terms of the watching spaceships explode department. It’s been crappy acting, effects, and George Lucas screenwriting the past 12 years.

All of that ends now. Star Trek may not be brilliant cinema, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun. It is also shiny, well-paced and a lot of things go boom. This already makes it superior summer entertainment. But as an added bonus at no extra cost, the dialogue induces no vomiting!

In fact, not only is the dialogue good, the acting is better. This is more than a pleasant surprise, it’s a new standard. Put it this way: you might have thought, while watching Attack of the Clones and wincing at the horrific acting and amazingly dull dialogue, “well, it’s the price I pay for watching a spaceship movie.” Now it is clear that, no, we can have our space and have acting too. J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek proves those George Lucas’s new Star Wars movies just plain sucked.

Oh, Star Trek ain’t perfect. The plot is (at times) a coat-rack to which to hang lots of bang, zoom and boom. The villain is pretty standard issue angry ugly guy. There is some business with creatures on an ice planet that seems forced. Time travel is used to duct tape over plot holes, some embarrassingly large. The movie doesn’t really have a central idea or concept. And five bucks to anyone who can tell me what the hell Winonna Ryder is doing in this movie.

But honestly? Who cares? The badass more than pays back the meh. The special effects are amazing, everything looks real or at least fun. It's never boring. The younger Kirk and Spock are excellent. We like them. We want to watch them do more. We see why they clash, and why they are friends.

The other original crew members are fun, too. Simon “Hot Fuzz” Pegg and John “Harold and Kumar” Cho do not disappoint, but special credit goes Karl “Doom” Urban, who is spot on as Bones McCoy. (Yes, he says “Damn, it Jim!” Yes, it’s awesome.)

The story also has surprises, some fun, some nasty. We’ve seen planets blow up in Star Trek before, but it’s usually followed by some time travel to save the day. Not this time. Like I said, bang, zoom and boom. But unlike most space movies, the boom and bang parts have real consequences. So lo and behold, when the special effects go nuts, you actually care. And, to your surprise, you do.

It's the summer. Movies are supposed to be fun, we also hope they will be good. Seeing Star Trek after Wolverine is like someone giving you a cold corona with a lime after you accidentally drank a skunked can of Papst Blue Ribbon at a bbq. It may not be perfect in form or execution, but god damn, did you need it.

RATING: * * * * (out of 5)

P.S. Lots of fun references for fans here. My favorite was seeing Kirk’s fabled Kobayashi Maru test. Over the top? Yes. But fun.

P.P.S. Leonard Nimoy is the classiest man to ever wear rubber ears.