DIRECTOR
Dean Parisot
SCREENWRITERS
David Howard
Robert Gordon
STORY
BY
David Howard
PRODUCERS
Mark Johnson
Charles Newirth
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Jerzy Zielinski
MUSIC
David Newman
EDITOR
Don Zimmerman
CAST
Tim Allen (Jason Nesmith)
Sigourney Weaver (Gwen DeMarco)
Alan Rickman (Alexander Dane)
Tony Shalhoub (Fred Kwan)
Sam Rockwell (Guy Fleegman)
Daryl Mitchell (Tommy Webber)
Enrico Colantoni (Commander Mathesar)
Robin Sachs (General Sarris)
Patrick Breen (Quellek)
Missi Pyle (Laliari)
Justin Long (Brandon)
Jeremy Howard (Kyle)
Kaitlin Cullum (Katelyn)
Jonathan Feyer (Hollister)
MPAA rating: PG
Running
time: 102m
U.S. release: December 25, 1999
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Official
site
|
Combine
this year's documentary Trekkies
with a particularly solid and action-packed Star Trek
movie and you've got Galaxy Quest, an enormously entertaining
pop-culture ride. Not just an in-joke fest for Trekkies, it trades
on our general awareness of the Star Trek cult and at
least a passing familiarity with the show (mainly the original
series) and movies. The premise, cooked up by writers Robert
Gordon and David Howard, is so ingenious I'm surprised nobody
thought of it before: What if a group of has-been TV actors were
genuinely mistaken for the heroic starship crew they used to
play, and were expected to know everything their characters used
to know? This postmodern concept far outdoes Last Action Hero,
and is a lot more satisfying. Galaxy Quest works as satire,
parody, and straight adventure; it's a full package.
We meet our heroes at the latest of many fan conventions in honor
of Galaxy Quest, the well-loved, long-dead sci-fi series.
There's Gwen DeMarco (Sigourney Weaver), who used to play Lt.
Tawny Madison, whose job was to talk to the computer and show
off her pulchritude. There's Tommy Webber (Daryl Mitchell), who
was a little boy when he played ship pilot Lt. Laredo and is
now all grown up. (The movie could have had some fun by portraying
the older Tommy as a skirt-chaser like Burt Ward; maybe it once
did, but DreamWorks tidied up the film to secure a kid-friendly
PG rating.) There's the disdainful Alexander Dane (Alan Rickman),
a respected theater actor until he agreed to put alien latex
on his head to play the Spock-like Dr. Lazarus; the role made
him famous and killed his credibility in one shot. There's the
lackadaisical Fred Kwan (Tony Shalhoub), forever stuck in the
bowels of the ship as Tech Sgt. Chen. Finally, there's Jason
Nesmith (Tim Allen), the prima-donnaish star of Galaxy Quest,
who on some level still seems to believe he's Commander Peter
Quincy Taggart. Nesmith is the only one who really gets anything
out of the endless conventions, where he's idolized; everyone
else in the cast looks out at the throngs of "Questerians"
and sees the murderers of their careers.
The opening scene at the Galaxy Quest convention will
probably frighten those who didn't see Trekkies; those
who did will laugh heartily at how uncannily accurate the milieu
is (the movie doesn't even try to satirize Trekkies, who are
often so ludicrous as to be beyond satire). It's at this convention
that Nesmith meets a quartet of very avid fans. They look and
talk strange, and are extremely adamant about wanting "Commander
Taggart" to accompany them so he can save their race. They're
pretty much like anyone else you'd meet at a convention, and
Nesmith blows them off until they come for him in a limo that
turns out to be a spacecraft. The hung-over Nesmith wakes up
in deep space among the Thermians, the friendly alien race who
brought him there. The Thermians are on the brink of war with
a band of ugly Stan Winston-designed critters -- the usual gang
of bestial aliens who seem to exist only to go around dominating
other races all day. Once Nesmith figures out the Thermians and
this situation are real, he sends for his "crewmates"
(a disposable crewman who appeared in one episode and got killed,
played by Sam Rockwell of The
Green Mile, also tags along). So then we have a bunch
of hack actors taking their old places on a ship designed by
the Thermians in homage to the "historical documents"
(i.e., Galaxy Quest) they picked up in transmissions.
Galaxy Quest is directed with a light, fast pace by Dean
Parisot (Home Fries and the Oscar-winning short The
Appointments of Dennis Jennings), who effectively delivers
all the special-effects power and thrills of a real Star Trek
movie, only without all the gassy moralizing and shallow moral
conundrums. Here, the dilemma cuts closer to the bone: The Thermians
look up to Nesmith and company as historical legends, which even
the egotistical Nesmith knows they don't deserve. And there's
a legitimately painful moment when Nesmith is forced to admit
to the Thermian leader (Enrico Colantoni) that he and his crew
are "liars" (since the Thermians have no concept of
acting or performing). The movie blurs the line between actual
belief and fanboy belief: There's not a lot of difference between
the Thermians and the pimply geeks at conventions who ask Nesmith
elaborate technical questions to settle some fanboy dispute.
Yet in a pinch, when Nesmith and crew need tech support, those
fanboys come in very handy.
Parisot has assembled a top-flight cast -- a lot more colorful,
really, than the casts of any version of Star Trek. For
those wary of Galaxy Quest because Tim Allen is the star,
I can assure you this is probably the first good movie he's appeared
in. He doesn't try to "do" William Shatner, but he
nails Shatner's puffed-up arrogance and hyperdramatic line readings
(but only when in character as Taggart on the show; as Nesmith,
he delivers lines like an actual human being). It's nice to see
Sigourney Weaver in a comedy again -- it reminds you that before
she became a Serious Hollywood Actress, she goofed around in
Christopher Durang plays. She's a great sport, and she obviously
gets a kick out of playing Gwen the blonde bimbo who finally
gets to prove herself. The others in the cast -- the hilariously
withering Rickman, the bored-looking Shalhoub (he couldn't be
more unlike the excitable ship engineer Scotty), the panicky
Mitchell -- are equally fine, but it's Sam Rockwell who walks
away with the movie, just as he stole The Green Mile as
the chocolate-spewing Wild Bill. Here, as "Crewman Six,"
he lives in fear that he's expendable -- he goes into every new
action sequence absolutely certain he's going to get killed.
I do have one small quibble involving his character: He should've
been the one to pull out a phaser and triumph at the very end
-- not Nesmith, who hardly needs more audience applause.
In a weird way, Galaxy Quest also fits nicely into the
current psychology of American movies. Being
John Malkovich, Fight
Club, American
Beauty, Boys
Don't Cry, The
Talented Mr. Ripley, Man
on the Moon -- they're all about wanting or pretending
to be someone else. Since this is a Hollywood family movie, Galaxy
Quest ends on a high note, with the pretenders learning to
be the real McCoys (no pun intended). Granted, a darker comedy
might have had the crew of has-been actors be so arrogant that
they get the Thermians killed because they really don't know
what they're doing. But this crew is so likable that we want
them to succeed -- sort of like the Enterprise crew in
the best Trek installments. I just have two questions:
Are we looking at DreamWorks' first-ever franchise here (that
depends on how well this first movie does), and will there be
action figures? I for one wouldn't pass up a Gwen DeMarco figure. |