Star Trek Movie Review - Not Much of a Final Frontier

The Beastie Boys must be happy knowing their music will still be played in the 23rd century. Trek fans, maybe not so much. And it's not that there's anything outwardly wrong with having Sabotage play as a young, delinquent James T. Kirk rides around future Iowa in a 1960's muscle car, either. After all, this is fiction. What's wrong is that the new Star Trek doesn't know what it wants. If it wants to be taken seriously as a bona fide science fiction effort, then there's no place in it for such dated slights of irrelevant pop culture. And if it wants to appeal to what must be the movie's main audience, i.e teens, then even by their standards the Beastie Boys are archaic.

These issues epitomize the latest Star Trek log entry's failure to truly reboot the franchise. It's a confused, long winded and ultimately unsatisfying picture with very little of the spirit that made the original series and its follow ups occasionally enchanting. Plus, with Lost now a joke of its former self, it's evident J.J Abrams' affections and attention were entirely on this movie - a misguided effort, if we may be allowed to say so.

In terms of talent, there's promise. Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto interact well and manage to breathe some new life into their roles as Kirk and Spock, respectively. Zoe Saldana makes the most of her stint as Uhura, although for a release that billed itself as "not your father's Star Trek" her outfit sure seems a lot longer and less revealing than Nichelle Nichols' ever was. Another awkward aspect - the 2009 model appears to have taken on a prudence never recorded in the 1960's serial.

Eric Bana shines as Romulan captain Nero, but only gets a few minutes on screen, most consisting of orders to fire some weapon or other at a hapless Starfleet vessel. This problem hints at a broader plot that's made up of confusing time travel bits and overall disappointing action sequences. For example, Nero's massive ship appears above two of the Federation's prized planets, Vulcan and Earth, yet only the Enterprise shows up for the fight. Where's the rest of Starfleet? Where's the ground batteries?

These are questions a science fiction lover would ask, which leads us to suspect this one wasn't done by sci fi addicts. Please don't think we're knocking J.J - he's given us a lot of great stuff over the years, not least of which the amazing Cloverfield not so long ago. However, his imagining of Star Trek is a letdown.

Even with OK performances by Simon Pegg (Scotty), John Cho (Sulu) and Karl Urban (McCoy), this remains a lacking addition to the pantheon. We're sure plenty thought the exclusion of the famous "to boldly go" intro and classic opening theme until the last three minutes of this behemoth was in poor taste. This isn't yet another sequel, we're talking a re-launch. They should have used more of the legacy, and we don't mean going back to the desert locale where Shatner fought that lizard. That's not enough, nor is working Slusho into the mix.

What it does get right it does due to having a bigger budget than everything prior in the franchise combined. The ships look better, San Francisco looks better, and Eric Bana's monstrous battleship rocks. There's even some interesting shots of the farmland Kirk hails from.

But even taken on its own this isn't a good movie. As part of a broader concept, it does little to improve on what's come before.

Rating: * *

Directed by J.J AbramsStarring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Eric Bana2009, 120 minutes, English