Hamlette's Soliloquy

What a summer for fun movies! I went to see Star Trek today, and treated myself to a cherry slushie since it's Mother's Day. Now, I didn't love this like I loved Wolverine, but that's okay. I didn't expect to. In fact, I was quite prepared to hate it if necessary, to erase the whole thing from my memory. Fortunately, I don't have to.

First and foremost, I have to say that the actors portraying Baby Kirk, Baby Spock, Baby Bones, and Baby Scotty (which is how I keep thinking of them) were amazingly good match-ups for those characters' original incarnations. Chris Pine, who played Baby Kirk, had Bill Shatner down pat. The swagger, the grin, the cocky smirk, the captain's-chair-sprawl-and-lean -- he did everything but imitate Shatner's oft-mocked dialog delivery. Of course, since Jim Kirk has ever been my favorite character, I may have been paying a wee bit more attention to details like those, both in the original series and in this ;-) I'd say I was second-most impressed with Karl Urban as Baby Bones. I've loved Urban ever since he played Eomer in the Lord of the Rings, and I have to admit I was really curious about this casting. But he had Bones' drawl, laconic attitude, and perpetually worried expression in spades. Zachary Quinto and Simon Pegg were also great as Baby Spock and Baby Scotty, and also had ther moments where they were spot-on perfect, but they had a lot of help from prosthetics or a strong accent to get them into their characters.

Baby Uhura was a beauty, Baby Chekov was cute and smart, and Baby Sulu got a nifty sword. They were all acceptable. Bruce Greenwood made a lovely Capt. Christopher Pike, and I wish he'd had more screentime.

The real surprise in the cast for me was Eric Bana! He acted! Honest! I'm usually bored to tears by him, but he was actually having fun as the renegade Romulan -- he totally needs to play villains from now on.

As for the plot... it's about time travel. I tried hard not to think about it too much. Leonard Nimoy had a nice chunk of screentime and I was happy for him. Oh, and I probably should mention they had me in tears before the opening credits. Never after, though. I did laugh quite a bit, as did lots of others in the theater. And we clapped at the end :-D

A bit of spoilage:

So, um, Baby Uhura and Baby Spock? Yeeeeeah, what was up with that? I really felt like they just threw that in to spice things up a little and not let Baby Kirk get all the kissing scenes. Totally unneccessary, IMHO, and I wish they hadn't gone there, as it has all sorts of implications and repercussions that I don't want to think about. Now, Baby Uhura catching Baby Kirk hiding under her roommate's bunk in his tighty-whities? That worked for me, because sometimes Uhuhra does get this glint of amusement in her eye when interacting with Kirk, and this works as what she could be remembering.

And, they're sooooo going to have to do another one, because Amanda Greyson is still alive in the series. Yeah, need to fix that. Also, Jim needs a brother. And a dad. Ahem.

So anyway, if I hadn't had my yearly slushie, I'd have given it two Warheads, because it got a bit soggy in that bit where Baby Kirk was running around the Ice Planet Hoth.

Oh, a note about the Romulan ship and Spock's shuttle -- was anyone else thinking Firely? The Romulan ship really reminded me of something the Reavers might fly, and Spock's shuttle's rear section was really remeniscent of Firefly-class ships like Serenity.

So, I'd totally see this again on DVD, and I'm all psyched to rewatch the original series now. I believe I can watch all of them for free on cbs.com, so I may just start going through the series from the beginning -- there are actually quite a few eps I haven't seen, even though I've loved Classic Star Trek for a couple years longer than I've loved Combat! (not that I've seen all the eps of that, either). Also, I might see if I can get this soundtrack, cuz it had lots of percussion and horns, which I love.