Overall Rating
 Awesome: 26.28%
Worth A Look: 59.85%
Average: 10.22%
Pretty Bad: 0.73%
Total Crap: 2.92%
7 reviews, 95 user ratings
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| Galaxy Quest |
by Brian McKay
"By Grapthar's Hammer - what a movie!"
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GALAXY QUEST is one of those rare movies that manages to have and eat its cake. It relentlessly pokes fun at the rabid fans of sci-fi geekdom and the has-been actors that they deify. Yet the ribbing is never too mean-spirited, and it gives the geeks and has-beens get a chance to become real heroes.I wanted to hate this movie the first time I saw it. It has Tim Allen doing his Tool Time shtick in a spaceman uniform. It has really annoying aliens. It's got Franz from Die Hard (Alan Rickman) wearing a goddamn prosthetic on his head that looks like it came from the Babylon 5 wrap party and garage sale. Or maybe I wanted to hate it because it hit a little too close to home, reminding me of my own geekhood from days of yore. Yes, that's right, it's confession time again. I used to be something of a Trek geek (read my Star Trek: Nemesis review). And in fact I have actually (deep breath) . . . set foot in a Star Trek convention once. Okay, maybe twice, but never three times! Oh, wait, there was that one I went to in Salt Lake City. Goddamit! Okay, three times, but never EVER four. No, I didn't wear the pointy ears or anything . . . but even if I had, confession time only goes so deep. Needless to say, sometimes it's kind of hard to chortle at "those fucking geeks" when you wake up with the painful realization that you used to be one of them.
Nevertheless, chortle I did. This is by no means a perfect film. It's not even a perfect Trek parody. But dammit, it works. Maybe it's because the cast just clicks so well and has so much fun with it, or maybe it's because the filmmakers are obviously closet-geeks themselves, since they approach the good-natured ribbing with just the right amount of respect that can only come from a fan.
The show begins with the crew of Galaxy Quest, a TV sci-fi cult phenomenon that was canceled twenty years ago, sitting around their dressing room at a sci-fi convention and bemoaning their fate. Gwen DeMarco (Sigourney Weaver, who either had a boob job or is wearing a cybernetically enhanced playtex push-up bra), who once played the blonde barbie-doll communications officer, is pissed at Jason Nesmith (Tim Allen) because "The Commander" is late for their appearance once again. Meanwhile, Shakespearean-trained actor Alex Dane (Alan Rickman, stealing the show as usual) sits facing a mirror with a big pointy alien skull thing on his head and mutters lines like "How did it come to this? I once played Richard the III." The rest of the crew, including the stoned Fred Kwan (Tony Shaloub) and child-star turned has-been Tommy Webber (Daryl Mitchell), have come to accept that the convention circuit is the only steady gig they're ever going to get. Only Nesmith, who relishes in hamming it up as "The Commander", doesn't seem to mind paying the bills by fleecing convention-going fans at twenty bucks a pop.
However, when real (and real annoying) aliens show up and "kidnap" the crew, taking them on board a working replica of the starship "Protector", they have a chance to prove themselves as real (albeit highly reluctant) heroes. As it turns out, the aliens reconstructed the Protector from intercepting Earth's television transmissions and mistaking old episodes of the show for "historical documents". While they are technically advanced, they have no combat experience or strategic skills, and beg "The Commander" and crew to help them fight the evil alien Saris (Robin Sachs).
Even for a comedy, Galaxy Quest requires a huge suspension of disbelief in order to accept that a group of actors could pilot a starship, etc. But the movie's so fun, you just don't give a damn. True, the aliens quickly and frequently cross the line from quirkily amusing to dental-drill annoying, although Missi Pyle as the alien cutie "Laliari" certainly makes their race as a whole more tolerable. But it's all the little knowing nods to the cliches of the Trek phenomenon that make this film so damned enjoyable. When Allen walks onto the stage at a convention, he has the Shatner walk down pat. Even after they manage to disarm the self-destruct mechanism, the countdown clock keeps on ticking right down until 1 second - "just like it did on the show". And Sam Rockwell adds a nice touch as "Guy Fleegman", the convention promoter who once starred on the show as the expendable security officer who died before the first commercial break, and who now doesn't want to leave the ship fearing the same fate. Who would be so cognizant of all the source material's little idiosyncracies, if not a true fan - even a former one?GALAXY QUEST makes geekdom look almost respectable. Watching it makes you feel all right with your inner geek, and look back on the source of your geekly affection like you would look back fondly on an old lover. For two hours, it makes you remember all the things that made being a geek seem so great. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go rent "The Trouble with Tribbles". HA, just kidding - you fucking geek!
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=1779&reviewer=258
originally posted: 01/05/03 08:25:23
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USA
25-Dec-1999
UK
N/A
Australia
06-Apr-2000
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