Star Trek: Insurrection

Star Trek fans do not need any encouragement to see this movie. Even if it is incredibly bad, they will see it six times just to be able to explain in acute, unrelenting detail exactly how bad it was to their Internet friends. The question, therefore, is what attraction this movie can have for those who don't hate Star Trek from deep in their souls but are not, on the other hand, the proud owners of a life-size cardboard Jean-Luc Picard statue (as I once did...sigh).

Past Star Trek movies have, in my opinion, given the non-Trekker scant inducement to pay any money to see them, or even go near them at all. (Or, as the Manly Movie Guide puts it, "Quick: how many William Shatner movies would you be willing to watch of your own volition? Does the number ‘zero' keep popping into your mind, no matter how hard you think?") The saving grace of the "Next Generation" franchise in that regard is the presence of Patrick Stewart, playing the aforementioned Captain Picard. Stewart, a Royal Shakespeare Company veteran and the star of the interesting color-reversed "Othello" that played here a few months back, can actually act; but, more to the point, he's a man, even though he can actually act. His pores ooze authority and forceful presence, even when flustered in diplomatic situations or when going kissy-face in the gratuitous-love-interest scenes. The other notable actor in the "TNG" franchise is Brent Spiner, a fine comic actor who happens to be playing the android Data. Although Stewart has successfully avoided being science-fiction ghettoized, I am not sure Spiner can avoid this fate, which is a pity, as he has a dead-on sense of timing and delivery and, when pressed, can look pretty pissed off also.

In fact, the quality that sets this "Star Trek" movie apart from all the other ones I've seen is its emphasis on comedy and lightness of tone. There are several useless throwaway jokes that are nonetheless pretty funny, such as Spiner showing how in emergencies he was designed to be usable as a flotation device or Lieutenant Worf's Klingon pimple, and the movie as a whole never quite achieves the seriousness of purpose that some of the better episodes of the TV show did (this movie, by the way, makes it three out of three in the category of Star Trek movies that are distinctly inferior to that episode of "TNG" where Picard gets Borged).

This is not all bad, as this movie is certainly not ponderous like some episodes of the TV show were. The only exceptions here are the echt-idyll scenes showing the people who are about to be shot at by aliens from above, which are cloying and nauseating and filled to the brim with treacly music that lowers my opinion of Jerry Goldsmith. There is, as was mentioned earlier, a ponderous love interest storyline and of course some moral baggage about forced relocation, but apart from some post-idyll nausea only Stewart and Spiner and the surprising barrage of jokes lingered in my mind afterwards.

So: enjoyable fluff, not too forbidding for the non-Trekker. The bottom line is, if you really want to hear a Klingon, a gravelly-voiced Englishman, and an android sing an aria from "H.M.S. Pinafore" during a dangerous high-speed outer-space-vehicle chase, this is the only movie you'll need to go to all year.

Hey, I thought it was funny.

Attractive Man Count: This whole "William Riker, Stud Monkey" thing is getting less and less plausible every time out. I say Picard and that's it. 1.

Attractive Woman Count: Ditto for Counselor Troi. 1 for Doctor Beverly Crusher, although I am seriously tempted to forfeit any points for these women on the basis that there is entirely too much discussion on this point on the Internet.

Overall Grade: B. Not the most compelling movie ever made, but might just be worth the trek.

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