Review

Review Date: 10-May-09
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Juicy

Star Trek (2009)

It is exciting when a movie character makes a bold entrance. It is doubly exciting when that character is familiar but emerges in a new light. It is triply exciting when a movie grants notable entrances to two familiar characters and is itself a bold statement of arrival. For example: J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, a clever piece of self-justifying franchise-launching wrapped in a rousing adventure. It takes one of the most over-analyzed and fetishized of sci-fi mythologies and convincingly shows that we can seek out new life within its universe. Not only within its universe, but within the lives of characters our world has known for decades.

Star Trek tells the story of how charismatic James T. Kirk met the logical Spock, became captain of the starship U.S.S. Enterprise and her crew, and set off on a five-year mission to explore strange new worlds … sort of. The plot cooked up by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman uses time travel to create an alternate reality in which their reboot of the series holds sway. In this reality Kirk (Chris Pine) loses his father at birth, becomes a juvenile delinquent, and is saved from drinking himself into an early grave by a goad from Starfleet Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood). (Pike was the hero of Gene Roddenberry's original Star Trek pilot and is also saved here from a grievous misfortune.) While Kirk is trying to make something of himself, Spock (Zachary Quinto) grapples with reconciling his Vulcan-human parentage, during which process he indulges both violent and (gasp!) romantic tendencies. They meet when neither has figured out the answers and do not enjoy an amicable start. Only a common enemy (Eric Bana as a cranky Romulan) and a touch of magic (an extended, reverential cameo) unite them. Can we accept new faces in these old roles and care about them as we once did?

Yes and yes. The reinvented first chapter in the Star Trek saga is linked to its source by humor, allusion, and a quality I can only describe as potential. On a basic level are "inside" jokes so broad that even non-fans might recognize them — they riff on the pop culture residue of the show more than the show itself. (In this area Karl Urban, erstwhile hunk from The Lord of the Rings, etc., reveals a flair for comedy as "Bones" McCoy who is, dammit, a doctor, not a physicist!) Then there are thematic nods to the original series like mind control by slug. Finally there is a superb cast of relatively unknown actors who appear undaunted by going where men (and women) have gone before. Each is given a chance to shine and does; each adopts the new ground rules for their character as their own. They enable Abrams and his writers to accomplish the movie's prime directive: introduction through realignment. They enable audiences to anticipate their next adventure on the final frontier.

Copyright © 2009 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.