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Star Trek

THE FOLLOWING IS A REPRINT OF THE REDBLOG REVIEW OF STAR TREK ON ITS THEATRICAL RELEASE. STAR TREK IS NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD THROUGH REDBOX.

Other redblog Trek pieces:

Erika Olson's Non-Trekkie Review of Star Trek

What We Talk About When We Talk About Star Trek -- Locke reminiscences on what Trek has meant to him since childhood.

UPDATE: When I wrote this review last May, I was still somewhat tentatively circling J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot, soaking it all in, processing the new shininess. Since then I've come to flat-out, unequivocally love the new Trek film--it'll no doubt make it on my top 10 list for 2009.

If can you get past young Jimmy Kirk taking a '66 ‘Vette for a 23rd-century thrill ride while jamming to The Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage,” then you should be okay with the rest of J.J. Abrams’ hyperactive, pop explosion refit of the Star Trek franchise.

Sure, there’s a lot of energy-drink-fueled teen giddiness and slapstick to the proceedings—at times you’d think it was Stardate 90210. And while it’s true Old Trek sometimes spent too much time sitting around talking, this new version feels a like a kid on a sugar rush, running circles around the room until you want to scream “Just STOP for a moment! Stand still and take a breath!”

But hey, I love me some Beasties, and overall, this is one helluva fun Trek--Star or otherwise. Maybe it’s a little too obsessed with hooking in younger, non-Trekkie viewers (product placement in a Trek film feels a lot like billboards at Wrigley Field), but considering all the hoops it has to jump through to get its origin story off the ground… while pleasing both newbies and devotees… and while introducing a very young, fresh-faced cast playing pop-cultural icons… well, this is a fine, fine start. One that not only leaves you breathlessly entertained, but giddy with anticipation for where Abrams and his co-creators can go next now that they have the hard part out of the way.

There is a plot—it involves Nero, a Romulan miner (Eric Bana) on an avenge-the-dead-wife mission (not the last shade of Khan the new film offers up) that involves going back in time almost two centuries and putting a serious hurt on the core systems in the budding United Federation of Planets. (An entity I’m not sure is ever mentioned in the film.)  Nero's first pounce comes just as Baby Kirk is being born (in space, not Riverside, Iowa—although he'll grow up there and the town still gets a nice shout out).

In what is a surprisingly touching moment amid the chaos, baby Jimmy Kirk is named and then left a fatherless rebel-to-be. (One critic noted that as the shuttle carrying Momma Kirk and her newborn waif retreats from Nero’s attack, it is literally the last time in his life James T. Kirk will back away from anything.) The Romulan with the Tyson face tattoo then pops back up 25 years later to continue his rampage, rushing the newly commissioned Starfleet flagship Enterprise into action with a crew comprised almost solely of cadets. (More Khan echoes.)

All of this, however, is pretense. Star Trek’s true goal is two-sided: Get young James T. Kirk (Christopher Pine) into the captain’s chair of the Enterprise and get his friendship with his Academy rival, Spock, started.

The ship, its captain, and its first officer will become legendary in time, but Abrams’ Star Trek wields a double-edged sword. The new film benefits from most of us already knowing—directly or indirectly—who these characters are. But that advantage cuts the other way as well, as comparisons to the original actors and their hard-earned dynamic are inevitable.

To everyone’s credit, they all hold their own nicely. Unlike the woe-begotten Hayden Christensen, Pine hits the ground running on his way to Movie Stardom—his lack of intimidation by the boots he needs to fill perfectly echoes Kirk’s own reckless confidence. There are plenty of times when Pine’s New Kirk comes off as an annoying jerk (the infamous Kobayashi Maru test is sadly tossed off as a smug, cocky joke) and his spastic womanizing feels more Van Wilder than Virile Leader.

But then you realize that’s the point. This is young Kirk, all impulse and swagger—he has 30 to 40 more years to season into the Kirk we last saw. Though it is unfortunate the film almost completely skips over his years at Starfleet Academy—Kirk appears to come out of the experience utterly unchanged from the unfocused horndog he went in as. (And yep, he beds a green-skinned Orion lass.)

Got 7 Minutes? Hear E's Take on 2012, Pirate Radio, The Ugly Truth and Up

This morning I chatted with the team at KPAM's 'Bob Miller in the Morning' show about two films that hit theaters today -- 2012 and Pirate Radio -- as well as two new DVDs now available at redboxes everywhere -- The Ugly Truth and Up. 

Take a listen!

Where? 

Why, right here.

Spread

I wasn't expecting much from Spread -- after an indifferently-received debut at Sundance, it played a handful of theaters for a period of time so short you'd need high-end physics equipment to measure it --  starring Ashton Kutcher (who also produced) as a young, charming L.A. man who keeps a roof over his head and the finer things in his life by deliberately seducing older, well-to-do women. He's not quite a prostitute. But if you look at his life hard enough, you can kinda sorta see it. What most interested me about Spread, when I finally caught up with it on DVD, is that the movie's in fact about Kutcher's character, Nikki, looking at his life hard until he kinda sorta gets a real look at what he is and what he's doing. ...

Much like another 2009 Sundance film, Shrink, Spread exists in part to give an actor a stretch of a role (Kevin Spacey in Shrink, Kutcher in Spread) and also showcases a very different kind of L.A.; Nikki may end up in palatial mansions in the Hollywood Hills if he plays his cards right, but if worse comes to worst he's exiled to his friends' shabby places in Silverlake or Los Feliz. And while it's possibly unkind to say that having Kutcher play a good-looking youth who gets by on charm may be the easiest casting task ever accomplished, it's also worth noting that Kutcher digs in here, and plays something hard and ugly under Nikki's soft words and pretty face. Kutcher's voice-over gives a nice second level to the film -- Kutcher on-screen is gentle endearments and sassy talk; his narration is blunt, bleak and brutal.

Up

I'm embarrassed -- nay, ashamed -- to admit this, but I had absolutely no desire to see Up when it was in theaters earlier this year. I can't put my finger on why; maybe it was because Up is the first Pixar film to revolve around normal ol' human beings. It had no talking fishies, no toys that come to life, no superheroes, no rats who can whip up delicious meals, no robots with a soft spot for Hello, Dolly!... nope, just a grumpy old man and what looked like a possibly annoying kid who float away in a house hitched to a ton of hot-air balloons. (Insert Balloon Boy joke here, because I can't bring myself to do it.)

I didn't see how there could be anything in Up that I would find entertaining -- even its trailers failed to pique my interest. 

But I still watched it, anyway, and came out of the theater singing its praises to anyone who would listen. Up has remained one of my top five movies of 2009, and is also my favorite Pixar film, by far.  It moved me to tears and had me laughing out loud. (Yes, "I laughed... I cried," OK?)  For me, the biggest surprise was how truly funny this movie was. 

What exactly did co-writers and directors Pete Docter and Bob Peterson get so incredibly right with Up? Let's start with the overall look of the film. It's just gorgeous. Eye-popping colors and dreamy landscapes abound. While you won't get all of the depth that the big-screen 3D effects brought to Up's animation when you watch this one on DVD, there's no reason to fear that you'll be missing out on any "gotcha!" scenes -- moments in which it looks like someone or something is jumping out of the screen at you. None of those tricks were used in this movie because the story was strong enough without them.

School of Rock

All it takes to become a star is one simple thing: The right movie. For Tom Cruise, it was Risky Business; for Eddie Murphy, it was 48 Hours. And for Jack Black -- launching him from bit-part supporting player to multi-media mega-comedian -- it was School of Rock. Written by Mike White (Orange County,Year of the Dog) and directed by Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise), School of Rock has a paper-thin premise, as slacker-rocker Dewey Finn (Black), desperate to make the rent, masquerades as his substitute-teacher roommate Ned Schneebly (White) and takes up a position teaching a music class, turning the kids into a backing band to try and win at a battle of the bands his old, ex-bandmates (who kicked him out for terminal uncoolness) are also competing in.

But one of the brilliant things in School of Rock -- and it is a movie full of small, brilliant moments --is that it knows this premise is paper-thin, and never tries to stretch it or sell it to us as iron-strong. Dewey knows he's embarking on an idiotically ill-thought-out plan; the kids gather almost instantly that Dewey is not a conventional teacher; Dewey does well by doing good, and along the way gives up what he thinks he wants and discovers what he needs. Linklater may be known as a master of sprawling youth-epics, full of big funny moments you remember, but he also has a hand on the simpler, gentler moments that make the funny stuff actually matter, and School of Rock relies on that balance and understanding.

The Accidental Husband

I was watching The Accidental Husband with a friend, and he shrugged halfway through it, saying "I've liked worse films than this." And in a way, his dismissal pretty much sums it up; you've liked worse movies than The Accidental Husband, and you've passed over better films than The Accidental Husband because they lacked the star-power and familiar faces it offers as the film-renting version of comfort food. In fact, The Accidental Husband is simultaneously supported and doomed by the fact that everyone in it is so charming -- which makes you willing to watch its contrivances and familiarities, even ask you ask why these very charming actors can't be in a slightly better film with a slightly better script that doesn't have such familiar contrivances.

Uma Thurman is Dr. Emma Lloyd, a top-rated talk radio advice and relationship expert in New York who advises her listeners to forgo romantic love in favor of responsible love -- to hope that you get your head in the process more than you hope to lose your head. One of the women she dispenses this advice to, Sophia, takes Dr. Lloyd at her word -- and calls off her wedding; her fiancée, NYFD's Patrick Sullivan (Jeffery Dean Morgan) is understandably hurt and sees Dr. Lloyd as the cause; a plucky neighbor kid, Ajay (Jeffery Tedmori) hacks into the city's database and enters a marriage certificate for Dr. Lloyd and Patrick ... which complicates her upcoming nuptials to Richard (Colin Firth), the head of the publishing house that's about to release her sure-to-be-a-best-seller. ...

Redblog On the Radio: Locke's Turn This Week

Take a listen as I discussed G.I. Joe, The Taking of Pelham 123, A Christmas Carol, and The Men Who Stare at Goats on KPAM's Bob Miller Show last Friday.

It's just like reading my reviews, only with a lot more "um"s and a lot less reading.

The Marc Pease Experience

There is a chance that some clever marketer will take advantage of currents in the culture and, noticing the audience's avid love for Glee, market The Marc Pease Experience as another plucky tale of high-school outcasts united and healed by the magical power of music and performance. This person would, in fact, be clever, but they would also, in fact, be evil with a capital 'E,' because The Marc Pease Experience is -- from horrible title to smug closing moment -- one of the least funny comedies in a long time, and a head-scratching exercise in how you can take three funny, talented people and wind up with them not being especially funny in any way. Fortunately, nobody seems hell-bent on marketing The Marc Pease Experience -- it was dumped unceremoniously into only 10 theaters nationwide, all in second-tier markets last August, and now comes ot a featureless, vanilla DVD in the hopes it might generate some cash on the strength of the names of its stars.

We meet Marc (Jason Schwartzman) just as he's getting ready to make his big entrance in his high school's production of The Wiz, as the Tin Man, egged and coaxed onstage by his drama teacher and the show's director Mr. Gribble (Ben Stiller) -- but Marc's stagefright gets the better of him, and the result is a disaster. Jumping forward 8 years, Marc's a limo-driver loser, dating a high school girl, Meg (Anna Kendricks) from his old school, and Meg also has an uncomfortable attraction to Mr. Gribble, who Marc resents and hates for ruining his life. So from the outset, we have a love triangle where two sides are creepily, disturbingly inappropriate for the other; who exactly are we supposed to root for?

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Paramount's feature-film live-action adaptation of the '80s comic-book and animation and toy franchise, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, is one of the most fascinatingly flawed big-budget movies imaginable. I stumbled out of it overcome with special-effects-induced sensory overload when it played in the theaters, wondering just how narrowly Hollywood is marketing its films these days-- is it, say, down to the year? The month? I'm moved to ask this because G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra feels like the perfect film for a fifteen-and-a-half-year-old-boy -- not one day more, not one day less.

You can't imagine someone much older enjoying G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra because, frankly, it is silly -- cartoony and crude, full of phony high-tech pseudoscience and heroes and villains with goofy codenames like "Snake Eyes" and "Ripcord," plus hidden bases that look like something from a Roger Moore Bond film on steroids. And I can't recommend someone much younger watching G. I Joe: The Rise of Cobra because while it is silly and nonsensical, it is also incredibly violent. And I'm not talking about the red-laser/blue-laser violence of the cartoon that inspired the film, either, where no blood was spilled and bad things happened far away; in the first reel of G.I. Joe, we see someone get a red-hot iron mask latched to their face while they're screaming, then a few people getting stabbed in the eye with knives and crossbow bolts; it is fun for the whole family, but only if your family likes watching people burned alive and stabbed in the brain. And I know plenty of fans of the '80s comics and TV show and toys who liked the nostalgia trip G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra offered, but, much like Transformers, I don't have that spoonful of sweet, toxic nostalgia it takes to make those big, stupid pills go down.

James' Latest Radio Spot

Wanna hear James give his take on last week's DVD releases, including Ice Age 3, Orphan and The Maiden Heist, as well as films currently in theaters, including Michael Jackson's This Is It and Paranormal Activity?  Then click here to listen to his spot on KPAM's Bob Miller Show this past Friday.   

You'll also learn what scary movies James likes to watch on Halloween.  Nope, I'm not going to spoil the surprise -- you have to tune in yourself!