Galaxy Quest [DVD]

As a fair-sized Star Trek fan (I haven't seen every episode, but I know the history of Romulus and Remus, and why Klingons only sometimes have ridged foreheads), I wasn't sure if this would irritate me or not - I feared really obvious jokes about creaky sets, silly over-enthusiastic fans and the overly naive, Communist utopia of Trek in general, and I also feared the opposite: overly nerdy and self-appreciative/referential humour like one of those episodes of Deep Space Nine or Babylon 5 built on "sending up" it's own mythology. What I got was, thankfully, neither, or rather a smart mixture of both that alienated neither faction of fans or non-fans. While it was never much of a danger of offending Star Trek fans by mocking their over-enthusiastic embrace of a TV show (something they're the first to make fun of themselves), it was a danger of doing it badly, and there was also the danger that non-Star Trek fans, generally speaking most women or men who weren't into it at a young age would not find much to laugh at. GQ manages to satisfy both audiences with a fun mix of light, but well written and performed, comedy and a fairly standard, but again well done, adherence to a STAR TREK episode/setup formula.The plot is another rehash of the old Three Amigos/A Bug's Life plot of actors mistaken for their characters. It's a well-worn setup, but it works for a reason: real humans have to live up to the godlike behaviour of fictional characters in most of our television and film, and that's usually something we're all to understand is difficult at best, horrifically funny at worst. Actors from an old TV show called Galaxy Quest, essentially the original STAR TREK with some elements of THE NEXT GENERATION thrown in, are abducted by childlike aliens to help negotiate a surrender with with some very scary bullying aliens. The script, to it's eternal credit, never tries to put Earth itself in jeopardy, which could have easily been done. I have always felt it was a uniquely American trait to insist all threats had to come to home in drama before it was worth intervention. The rest of the plot writes itself - fail to live up to ideals, reject ideals, embrace ideals for their symbolic value, save the day, the end.The cast are almost all very good, even if they don't get to shine all the time. Tim Allen, always a fair performer if not especially talented or innovative, plays the William Shatner/Captain Kirk role, embracing both the pretentious scene-stealing actor role, and both through that character and outside of it, the heroic and noble space cowboy. Note the all too perfect way he captures the one-side-leaning "Shatner pose" when sitting in the Captain's chair thinking.Sigourney Weaver doesn't do ANYTHING wrong, but she seems perhaps a bit overdetermined not to be Ripley that she sometimes just comes off as a caricature of a dumb blonde (she's playing Nichelle Nichols/Uhura, by the way, with some good jokes about her unnecessary role as intermediary between Captain and computer, recalling Counsellor Troi's frequent and totally superfluous advice that in the presence of an enemy who'd fired on the ship she was "sensing a lot of aggression"). Alan Rickman, almost always the highlight of any film, plays the science officer and the British stage actor who considers the whole Sci-Fi show beneath him - Spock and Patrick Stewart then, but this character also has a lot of latex on his forehead, suffering the brunt of the Klingon type humour. He not surprisingly brings a small amount of pathos to the role, selling the scenes where has to cite his oft-detested catchphrase, a riff on "Live long and prosper!" about someone's hammer and vengeance, sincerely to the most devout of fans. He also brings in quite a lot of the films laughs, as his pompous and hypocritical demeanour is gently mocked and deflated. Daryl Mitchell plays the navigator/comm controller, who was just a child when the show was on (Wesley Crusher, see?), and is played with an always (visually at least) loud style, but never annoyingly so.But Sam Rockwell is my favourite actor of all, playing the not-even-washed up actor who once played what Star Trek fans refer to as a "red-shirt" - the least important, most expendable and inevitably doomed member of the cast - on Galaxy Quest. Rockwell's most known roles are now for either Green Mile or Moon, but here he shows his wonderful proficiency with comedy in spades, providing the biggest laughs by both screaming and raising his voice at inopportune times, things that more famous "comedy" movie stars drive me crazy by resorting to, but Rockwell steals the show with. The words "rudimentary lathe" have forever been cast in stone in comedy heaven due to this man. This leaves Tony Shaloub, a normally very fine actor, who plays the engineer and not only is he not really reminiscent of Scotty or Geordie or any Trek engineers, he not so coincidentally is the only one without any real character to play, mostly he seems to be a glue-sniffing Jewish technician with no real grasp of what's going on. I think his character within the TV show was supposed to be Asian - a kind of Mickey Rooney/Breakfast at Tiffany's thing, reinforced by his constant squinting and last name "Kwan", but it never really goes anywhere - George Takei was, of course, actually an Asian man, and the fact that Takei was Japanese and not Chinese hardly constitutes this kind of gag. The gag about his late arrival, and the vital information he missed, is a good one but it's somewhat negated by an early torture video that seems to ruin the joke by inference.The benevolent aliens seem to be pretty annoying at first, with that particular pattern of speech, but actually aren't. During the last second-act, things get a bit emotional here and maybe that's coloured my view of these characters on repeat viewings. They are convincingly childlike, so we forgive any lack of foresight or perspective, and the speech pattern immediately.The villainous aliens, lead by Robin Sachs but reminding me of Frank Langella when he played Skeletor, are much more convincing than most of the Star Trek alien races, especially on the TV shows. Stan Winston Studios did the make-up effects and the skin, design and attire of them is instantly recognisable - both alien and militaristic. They, like the good aliens, are not analogues for any particular Trek or sci-fi race, but their warrior like stance despite the technology they use suggests the Klingons.Outside of those actors, Justin Long is here adding about as much as he usually does (which is about half as much of the nothing that Shia Lebouf brings).The visual effects by Industrial Light and Magic are top notch, superior to a lot of the Phantom Menace effects for that same year's STAR WARS film if you can believe that. It is clearly leaning on CGI, but ILM did CGI space effects a lot better than Digital Domain did for Insurrection and Nemesis, ILM having left the Trek franchise for those two films.The music is top notch and would stand along proudly next to most of the Trek scores, certainly above Generations or Voyage Home. It manages to be a send up of campy sci-fi, while also giving you the right swashbuckling, heroic feel.The whole movie, which clearly was a lot of effort, also has a really light touch. It doesn't want to change your life, your mind, anything more than your mood, but sometimes, often actually, that's just what we want. Almost all of the humour is organic as long as one understands the nature of Trek, something you'd have to live on the moon not to have some idea of. The only non-Trek reference I found was a TV screen showing people suffocating which brought to mind Total Recall. It is actually probably the best Trek related movie of the '90s outside of First Contact, because it touches more on what people WANT from these kind of films, even if it's spoofing those same thing, where Insurrection, Generations and Nemesis failed.

All I can say - a must watch! Lovingly told spoof story about the cast of a sci-Fi tv series which becomes a reality! Just brilliant! 😂

The premise is a simple one in that an alien race pick-up Earth television and mistake the adventures told in the now cancelled tv series Galaxy Quest as historical documents. They are under attack so, to fend off the attack, construct the spaceship depicted in the show and persuade the actors who, at the time of the aliens arrival are attending a convention and are in their character's costumes, to fly the ship. The whole film pokes affectionate fun at the over-zealous fans, the daft sci-fi premises of the genre and the petty ego of the actors whose careers have failed to prosper since the show was cancelled. Also, the film manages to provide the actors in the tv show with a character arc that turns them from a bunch of squabbling ego-centric narcissists into the team that was depicted in the show. Well written, well acted, perfectly paced and beautifully realised. Highly recommended.

Expected a spoof of Star Trek, but it is not that. Excellent cast and and very well made film. I recommend the associated documentary about the film also, after watching the film itself.

My partner had wanted to see this for a long time. So, I was delighted to find it on amazon.

As great as ever

I like the movie. Great spoof on the Science Fiction genre. I used this item to watch and add to my film collection

This is a very, very silly and yet EXTREMELY funny and entertaining parody of "Star Trek" - and also, surprisingly a great and clever tribute to this legendary franchise. Below, more of my impressions, with some limited SPOILERS.PRECISION: if you never saw at least one episode of ORIGINAL "Star Trek" series, watching this film doesn't make any sense - you will just lose your time. My SINCERE advice for all those who are until now completely "Star Trek" free - watch one episode of the ORIGINAL series! My personal recommended favourites are "Arena", "The Omega Glory", "Space seed", "Mirror, mirror", "Balance of terror", "The enemy within", "Bread and circuses", "Patterns of force", "Amok time", "Day of the dove" and of course "The trouble with tribbles"...)))In this film we follow the initially not so glamorous adventures of the cast of a once-popular television space-drama "Galaxy Quest". Those fictional series which are an almost exact replica of original "Star Trek" series starred Jason Nesmith (Tim Allen) as the commander of a spaceship called the NSEA Protector, Alexander Dane (Alan Rickman) as the ship's alien science officer, Fred Kwan (Tony Shalhoub) as the chief engineer, Gwen DeMarco (Sigourney Weaver) as the computer officer, and Tommy Webber (Daryl Mitchell) as a precocious child pilot.Since the cancellation of the show neither of them could find any more real acting jobs and they survive mostly by making commercials and appearing during fan gatherings... With the exception of pathologically optimistic Fred Kwan they are mostly not very happy about their lifes and careers, with two of them suffering especially badly: Jason Nesmith is an alcoholic and Alexander Dane is actually suicidal... And then one day a group of VERY peculiar fans makes contact with Nesmith and then the film really begins...This film is a surprisingly succesful parody/tribute. It is of course a pure comedy, without even one serious moment in it and it is also a GOOD comedy - but it is also a surprisingly gentle, tender parody, absolutely NOT like those "Scary movies" abominations and not even as mildly incisive as Mel Brooks "Spaceballs". In fact it reminded me more of Mel Brooks "Frankenstein junior", because this film mocks massively and mercilessly both the "Star Trek" show and its fans - and yet there is a surprising lot of tenderness towards the original material and the love fans feel for it... At the end, after watching the last scenes, I was not only amused but also a little bit moved...The great casting choices helped a lot to make this film a success. Alan Rickman who plays a long-suffering actor who had great ambitions but now is destined to be remembered only for silly make up and cheesy quotes ("No, no, no, no, I played once Richard III, I absolutely totally refuse to say this stupid line one more time!") is an ABSOLUTE NUMBER ONE treasure in this film. Sigourney Weaver is impossibly sexy in the blond wig and her character is another treasure ("I have only one job to do on board of this darn ship and even if it is completely stupid I am gonna do it!"). Tim Allen portrays a great parody of both Captain Kirk AND William Shattner. Tony Shalhoub, let's stress it again, is simply incredible as a pathologically optimistic guy, so happy and cheerful that we simply want to slap him - and at the last moment we simply cannot, so disarming he is... Finally, last but not least, there is also Sam Rockwell who plays Guy Fleegman, an extra who made just a cameo in one of episodes and who never fully recovered from it...)))...)))...)))By looking on the cover of the DVD you can guess that some real aliens will appear - and they give a great show, especially the alien babe Laliari (Misi Pyle), the hottest, sexiest cephalopode I ever saw...))) Fanboys of "Star Trek" are not forgotten and they are of course mocked mercilessly, but also with some tenderness and tact. There is nothing here even remotely similar to the obscene vulgarity of this "Fanboys" film, which dealt with "Star Wars" fans...Bottom line, this is an EXCELLENT, extremely funny and yet surprisingly gentle and even tender comedy, which is also a relatively rare thing - a well done "parody of and tribute to" the original material. An absolutely recommended viewing! ENJOY!