Synopsis:

A rebirth of the Star Trek franchise from director J.J. Abrams, this film follows the creation of the original crew of the Enterprise from their youth through Starfleet Academy to their first major challenge.

The Freak's Rating: C+ : It is hard to believe that in 1969, TV's Star Trek was cancelled because of poor ratings and caused very little fan reaction.  Here we are 40 years later watching yet another reincarnation of the series.  Gene Roddenberry developed the idea for Star Trek by toying with the idea of a Gulliver's Travels set in space, intending each episode to act as an adventure as well as a parable of sorts.  He succeeded in creating an architecture for a genre of television and movies that would continue for many years to come.

2009's Star Trek is engineered by television's golden boy, J.J. Abrams.  Abrams is the creative mastermind behind Lost, Alias and Felicity.  He has generated boatloads of money for the studios and has the luxury of having nearly every project he'd like to get behind greelit without much discussion.  Had some more discussion gone into doing so here, we may have had a better beginning for what will no doubt continue as the latest franchise that bears Roddenberry's title.

Separation from sentimentality is a difficult thing for many people to do when reviewing a film.  It is hard to rank any sequel poorly when you loved the original, right?  I watched reruns of the original Star Trek on my 13 inch black and white television in my bedroom as a teenager.  Though many of the other rebirths of the franchise escaped my attention, I was pleasantly surprised to have my college friends introduce me to Star Trek: The Next Generation.  I watched every episode, sad when it left the airways but satisfied with its depiction of the Star Trek world.  That is as far as my ties with Star Trek go.  I have zero problem blasting franchise films if in fact they stink.  See my review of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystall Skull for one example.  Much like Indy 4, the franchise can only carry the film so far before the bottom drops out.  Sadly, Star Trek suffers the same problems and therefore receives the same rating.

Direction is solid throughout, with awesome camera angles, great editing, beautiful use of CGI and wonderful pans and crops with the camera.  J.J. does a nice job putting this one together from a director's chair.  Where Abrams fails is the signing of two of his favorite writers in Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci.  The three worked together on a number of episodes of Fringe and Alias.  J.J. no doubt thought the two would pull off a script he could be proud of.  If Abrams is proud of this one, I fear for his future productions.  Dialogue is over the top by Dr McCoy, Scotty and Chekov.  A few comedic moments of the story are way too cheesy for this subject matter and take you away from the picture completely.  Some plot twists are nearly nonsensical (most notably those involving the highly publicized cameo of Leonard Nimoy).  The problems the writing team create may go unnoticed in an hour-long television show, but on the silver screen they are obvious.

Acting is adequate all around with strong performances by the two leads, Chris Pine as Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock.  Though William Shatner's onscreen charisma is truly lacking from his replacement, Pine is decent in the role.  Notably absent from the leads is onscreen chemistry, with Quinto outstaging Pine every time they share screen time.  As one of television history's most memorable friendships, the two need serious coaching in developing this on screen before the next film wraps.  Eric Bana is unrecognizable as the villainous Nero.  Bana starts strong and could have had a world class bad guy here, but quite quickly fades off into spitting out stereotypical bad guy lines and never really instituting fear...another horrible flaw by the writing team.  The remainder of the cast deals nicely with the amateur dialogue they're given.  Zoe Saldana gives a surprisingly sexy turn as Uhura and Simon Pegg (one of my favorite actors to watch) is humorous as Scotty.  Only one question for the casting director...Winona Ryder as Spock's mom?  That was an incredibly odd choice.

The film runs a tad long at 127 minutes, but wraps up precisely as required.  We are shown the cast we grew up watching, in all their glory as a young team in command of a starship, the music starts and the credits roll.  I'm excited to see them again, not to see their next adventure but moreso to see if they can present a better film next time.

Nate's Rating: A- : Some critics have been saying it's the best sci-fi movie of all time.  It's not.  But it is really solid and holds its own when compared to most other sci-fi films.  I think where it stumbled a little is mostly in a few unnecessary "comic relief" moments that destroyed the tension rather than easing it, and in one or two parts where the characters seemed to forget the urgency of the situation.  The acting is pretty good throughout, but the actors are mostly imitating their predecessors (flawlessly, I might add) rather than doing anything really new.  The space battles are well done, the bad guy is good and detestable (but lacks the charisma of Ricardo Montalban's Kahn), his ship is really cool, and the story definitely has enough twists (especially for trekkies) to keep it from being too predictable.  Actually, now that I think about it, this was a pretty clever way to reboot the franchise without completely throwing away everything that came before it.  I'm looking forward to where they take it this time.  It should be a fun ride.

Zach T's Rating: B+ : It was a really good movie but it didnt live totally up to its expectations and title it was to far in the future.

Jen's Rating: C- : This movie had too much hype.  I don't know much about Star Trek and never watched the show.  I was hoping that this movie would still be good regardless.  It just didn't do it for me, I actually fell asleep at one point.  Not my type of movie.

Angie's Rating: B : I have never watched Star Trek, but I don't think you could not be aware of the characters and have grown up in the USA... I went with my boyfriend at the time.  I actually really liked it and was pleasantly suprised.  I might be the of a select few having never seen any of the other movies or having seen the show, but still able to appreciate this kind of movie, so keep that in mind.

Connor's Rating: A : it was awesome!!!! didnt totally live up to the title though

Brian's Rating: A- : I thought this movie was very entertaining.  In my mind, it was a very well done reboot to the franchise.  It had so many opportunities to utterly fail, and it managed to not take any of those opportunities.

The new characters are instantly likable, they are their own unique roles, yet still tied to what all Trekkies know and love.  The does a great job of riding the thin line that keeps all hard core Trek people happy, as well as giving a franchise new life for anybody who does not care about the 60's TV show.

Yes, it does have some problems, notably some really bad dialog with Bones, and a lackluster villain, but the pure visual action of the film overshadows it all.  It really is simply a space action movie, and done so well as to be one of the best action movies around even if you strip away all of the property glarp.

A side note:  The Blu Ray transfer for this was simply amazing.  One of the best discs I have seen to compare contrast BR to DVD (this and Cars).

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