From Trekkies With Love

Movie Review:
Galaxy Quest

1999 / 1 hr., 42 min. / PG

Director: Dean Parisot

The success of the Star Trek phenomenon is amazing.  Flat acting, cheap special effects, and more than a handful of absurd plot lines should have relegated the original series to the scrap heap after only a few episodes, but it flourished, sprouting offshoots, fan clubs, and massive conventions decades after its inception.  I confess to liking it a little myself, but I do not own plastic Vulcan ears or a toy phaser.

It doesn’t take long to see the parodical references to Star Trek being made in Galaxy Quest.  According to the film, Galaxy Quest was a cheesy sci-fi TV show of the late 70's or early 80's, featuring a standard collection of characters designed to appease every gender, ethnicity, and age demographic available: A white, stalwart, risk-taking captain (Tim Allen), a buxom female officer (Sigourney Weaver) whose function was to intermediate between human crew members and the computer, an Asian technician (Tony Shalhoub), an alien science officer (Alan Rickman), and a black child pilot (first Corbin Bleu, then Daryl Mitchell) who cheerfully reports, “We made it, Captain,” in much the same way that a member of the peanut gallery would concur with Howdy Doody.

Now it is about two decades after the show went off the air.  The cast is older, but not much wiser, as they spend their time making appearances at Galaxy Quest Conventions, where they sign autographs for obsessed fans who wear costumes, recite lines, and debate strategies used in the show.  People who really need a life.

The ragged, self-absorbed, squabbling band of has-beens is approached by what appear to be more eccentric fans, who plead with them to come save the dying race of Thermians.  It is not long before the cast realizes they are dealing with actual aliens who believe them to be the actual crew of an actual starship.

It turns out the Thermians have been monitoring Earth’s television broadcasts for years, and assume that everything we’ve beamed across (or off of) our planet is factual, historical, documentary archive footage.  Taking their cues from the brave and fearless (and scripted) crew of Galaxy Quest, the Thermians have built a space station, starship, weaponry, uniforms, and even the mess hall’s menu, exactly to spec.

The skeptical cast soon find themselves beamed aboard the Thermian ship, where the Thermians eagerly await their brilliant maneuvers to conquer and destroy Thermia’s archnemesis, Sarris.  But can a handful of B-list actors pull off such a victory?  It’s a feel-good comedy, so what do you think?

This prosaic synopsis does not do justice to what is one of the most flawless and funny comedies I have seen in a long time.  Writer David Howard (in what is apparently his debut screenplay) and director Dean Parisot (Home Fries) have crafted something that is simultaneously a satire and an homage to the Trek mystique, and have done so without missing a beat.  The script is witty, fast-paced, and joyously abandoned to the marvel that is Star Trek.

Every quirk of Trek is brought into play, both in the Galaxy Quest shows, and now in the crew’s attempts to live up to their reputations.  Like Captain Kirk, Nesmith’s “Peter Quincy Taggert” apparently had a narcissistic penchant for going shirtless on several occasions, and he does so again while wrestling with a large animate rock creature.  Gwen DeMarco finds herself repeating the Thermian’s computer, exactly as she did on the TV show.  Sam Rockwell (Matchstick Men) tags along as “Crewman #6,” and spends his time on the Thermian ship worried that he is going to bite the dust early on, the way “Crewman #6” did in the original episode.  And on it goes.

The entire cast is well chosen, from the energetic and cocky Tim Allen (The Santa Clause) to the toffy-nosed Alan Rickman (Die Hard), whose character “was an actor once!” and laments the way his stint on Galaxy Quest ruined his Shakespearean career.  Tony Shalhoub (Men in Black) has a role that strikes me as the funniest, but you have to look for it, because he plays it calm and subtle.  For one thing, his character is Asian: Watch him do a little squinty-eye move as his sole means of switching from Italian actor to Oriental technician.  And notice what his constant hobby is.  I won’t spoil it by pointing it out, but it has become a game with my wife and me to find out how many times he engages in it during the film, even in the most desperate of situations.

The aliens, led by Enrico Colantoni (Stigmata), are also comical as they attempt to relate to earth-going humans.  Their methods of speaking, walking, and constantly smiling are judiciously stilted, making it believable that they are normally squid-like creatures who have temporarily assumed another form that they are not used to.

The final group that contributes to the adventure is a collection of nerdy teenagers, led by Justin Long (Jeepers Creepers).  We first meet them at the convention as they attempt to discuss a fine discrepancy in one of the “GQ” episodes, and later they help save the day with their excessive knowledge of the original show.  There is the question of whether the current generation would really find such interest in a lousy older show, but Long and Company are convincing as sincere and intense followers.  (And maybe today’s teens really are fascinated by the original Trek; I wouldn’t know, as I don’t go to the conventions.)

What makes this movie more than an inane comedy is the way the crew learns to relate to each other.  It borders on sincerely touching, the way Nesmith comes to realize what a jerk he has been over the decades to the fine bunch of supporting actors who were his fellow performers on the show.  And Alexander Dane’s humble acquiescence to the wishes of his biggest fan actually brings tears to my eyes.  Here are comedians who are truly human.  They are not playing anything for cheap yucks; they are playing the natural comedy of the given situation, and learning about life along the way.

Technical highlights include the alien race led by Sarris, which is very well crafted, and which should be, since they are supposed to be real, unlike the cheesy beings that Captain Kirk had to wrestle with.  It may have been possible to pay a little more attention to Sarris’ mouthpiece, which doesn’t always look as if it is actually enunciating the vowels and consonants we hear, but it is still an excellent achievement.

And I would also like to compliment David Newman’s score which is rousing from the beginning, and should be ranked alongside Bruce Broughton’s work for Silverado, or James Horner’s The Rocketeer score.  A strong trumpet motif gives us the spirit of boldness and adventure needed to watch this fearful crew timidly go where no man has gone before.

In deciding how to rate this film, I think I have to give it a perfect score.  This will probably be an affront to cinephiles who have written multi-page lectures on the innovations of Citizen Kane and the genius of Ingmar Bergman films, but let me defend my decision.

Every film, from the most intense drama to the fluffiest comedy, participates to some degree in the Unity of Art, a concept that describes how all elements should contribute to the central theme.  The more every facet of a film contributes to its unified whole, the stronger the film.  And ideally, nothing is out of place for even a moment, from characters to storyline to concept designs to costumes to make-up to musical score.  And though Galaxy Quest is of a slightly more trivial nature than grand masterpieces like The Godfather or Casablanca, it nevertheless achieves that Unity of Art as expertly as the best of them.

The script, the look of the film, the wry tone, the sets, the music – it all fits exactly as it should.  There was never a moment where I felt something was out of place or incongruent, or even delivered with less energy or flair than the other elements.  The creators of this film deserve the perfect grade that I am giving them.

By Grapthar’s hammer, what a movie!

Artistry: 10
Entertainment: 10