Star Trek (fans ****, others ***)
Directed by J.J. Abrams. Written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, based on characters created by Gene Roddenberry. With Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Eric Bana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Zoe Saldana, Winona Ryder, and Leonard Nimoy. (PG-13)
For fans of the Star Trek franchise, the opening of J.J. Abrams' new film represents something of a second chance at success. Despite some notable moments—Spock's valediction as he sacrifices his life to save his friends in The Wrath of Khan is known to bring grown men to tears to this day—the decades of often listless Trek films, where the promised grandeur of a big screen cosmic epic was lost in heavy-handed quasi-philosophy and moral posturing, has long threatened to bury the series with its own shovel.
What the lesser entries in the series have failed to grasp, and what makes Abrams the perfect choice of director to jump-start the franchise, is that Star Trek has always been first and foremost a television show. Episodic by design, with an ingrained structure of conflict and climax, the TV shows—even when hamstrung by lame effects or corny dialogue—were almost invariably more exciting than the films. Indeed, there has been a Star Trek on television in one form or another during every decade since the 1960s, keeping alive an audience ready to be disappointed by the occasional Hollywood misfire. Tellingly, the first Star Trek movie was released in the wake of Star Wars; for too long, the people behind Trek have been fighting to take on the ill-fitting mantle of Saga.
Credit Abrams and the writing team of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman with making sure that this new installment took a different approach. The trio are old hands at television, having worked together on shows like Alias, Lost, and Fringe, all of which, not coincidentally, are shows that marry the episodic demands of the medium with larger mythologies, those histories that are revealed over the course of seasons. They are all, also not coincidentally, easily described as guilty pleasures.
In their hands, Star Trek finally lives up to much of its promise. A big part of that comes from the fact that this is the story of the Romulus and Remus of the Trek canon: Kirk and Spock. We know these characters, but like Batman Begins or The Godfather: Part II, this Trek is a "prequel;" a story set before the time we first met them in their Shatner/Nimoy incarnations. We know them better than they know themselves. Which isn't to say there are no surprises; on the contrary, it's that foreknowledge that gives the surprises, when they come, their revelatory jolt.
But if that sounds like you'll need to know the difference between the Borg and the Baku to enjoy Star Trek, fear not; Abrams makes sure that his film plays out along the standard blockbuster lines as well. When we meet his James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), he's a newborn who narrowly escapes the explosion that kills his father. Growing up as a rebellious Iowa farm boy, he steals antique sports cars and starts bar fights with local Starfleet Academy cadets until an old friend of his father convinces him to enlist in Starfleet himself.
There, the cocksure future Captain meets the people who will help shape him: acerbic doctor Leonard "Bones" McCoy, the bewitching linguist Uhura, and, above all, Spock (Zachary Quinto), the half-human, half-Vulcan officer who will be both Kirk's adversary and closest friend. Quinto was born to play Spock—when he and Nimoy are onscreen together, the effect is startling—but it's Karl Urban, as Bones, who surprises the most, stealing an inordinate number of scenes as curmudgeon-in-training. Uhura, a character credited as one half of television's first interracial kiss—Kirk, of course, was the other—sadly is treated mostly as eye candy instead of groundbreaker. As a young Kirk, Pine is passable but still largely unformed; it will be interesting to see how he fares in the inevitable sequel.
While the film crams in references to the future Trek universe, it finds time to introduce Nero (Eric Bana), a tattooed and disgruntled Romulan who blames Spock for the destruction of his home planet and is bent on revenge. Bana, a fine actor who has done thoughtful work in films like Munich and Chopper, isn't given much to work with here; half his lines are of the "you have five seconds to surrender" variety. The important thing, however, is that it's not the young Spock—or only the young Spock—that he's after; thanks to some Hollywood-style ideas about the workings of black holes, Abrams introduces that most hoary of science fiction tropes: time travel.
Yet what seems like a cop-out is actually the film's biggest surprise. Without giving away too much, let me say that it's that most tired of devices that reinvigorates the entire enterprise (and Enterprise). The result is a storyline that, despite the occasional misstep, is both comfortingly familiar and tantalizingly open to new possibilities, and one that holds the promise of a future Star Trek all its own.
*
Also this week: Is Anybody There?, currently showing at Pleasant Street Theater, provides a master class in acting by Michael Caine in a film that, without him, might be little more than maudlin. As the elderly magician Clarence, Caine finds himself at the end of his professional road, his hands too shaky to perform, his mind not as sharp as it once was. (If the hand is quicker than the eye, both of his have slowed.) Widowed and adrift, he comes to rest in a retirement home where he meets Edward, the young son of the proprietors, who is so fixated on death and the hereafter that he records the dying breaths of residents.
Bill Milner, the talented young actor who plays Edward, made a strong impression as the wide-eyed son of a Plymouth Brethren family in Son of Rambow. In this film, like that one, he's exposed to a world he hadn't known existed; it's wonderful to imagine that he and Caine replicated that experience off the set, and that it's something we'll all be glad for as Milner chooses his roles in the years to come.
And finally this week, the Out! For Reel Film Series presents its Lesbian Film Festival at the Academy of Music in Northampton on Saturday, May 16 at 7:30 p.m. Featuring four award-winning films, the one-night event is centered around The Baby Formula, a comedy/drama about two women who conceive children using an experimental stem cell procedure that obviates the need for a male sperm donor. Also on tap are three shorts: Little Black Boot (a lesbian twist on the Cinderella story), No Bikini (a young girl decides to pass as a boy), and Buttery Top (Catherine Crouch's film about "a first date with extra baggage").
The fest happens May 16 at 7:30 p.m.(box office opens at 6:30 p.m.), $10/advance, $12/door, $8/students, Academy of Music, 274 Main St., Northampton. Advance tickets (strongly suggested) are available at www.OutForReel.org and at: Pride & Joy, Northampton; Food For Thought Books, Amherst; World Eye Bookshop, Greenfield; and The Odyssey Book Shop, South Hadley.
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
