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Dir:  JJ Abrams      Stars: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Eric Bana

Synopsis:  The first mission of James T. Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise.

Set your faces to fun!

I felt like a bit of a spoil sport, poo-pooing the not-so-hot Wolverine last week, but I’m happy to report that the new Star Trek reboot is awesome!  JJ Abrams of Lost and Cloverfield fame took the time to understand what was at the core of this franchise.

The cast is really good --- they all seem to be kind of imitating their predecessors, but bringing their own voices to the characters as well.  Newcomer Chris Pine is an excellent cocky Kirk and Zachary Quinto from Heroes is the perfect Spock.  The only thing that gets annoying is when Anton Yelchin’s Russian accent is a bit too forced as Chekov, though I do think Yelchin is a good actor.

The dialogue doesn’t fall into cheese and the amazing special effects bring the universe to life.  The action is balanced well with the character moments --- this movie just hums along at warp speed.  After an hour and a half, it felt like only 15 minutes had passed.  We have a spectacular summer popcorn movie on our hands here.

Sure there might be a few things I’d change here and there --- I wasn’t into the whole Spock/Uhura love story.  And as a fan, I’m not sure about the alternate universe *retcon aspect of things, but perhaps that gives the characters a new lease on their lives.  However, I think they’ve stayed true enough to the source material to please both fans and non-fans --- or rather --- new fans.

4 and a HALF Dorks out of 5 on the Geek-o-Meter!  How long do I have to wait for the sequel???

*retcon means retroactive continuity --- or changing the continuity of the series retroactively.  I don’t want to include any spoilers here, but it basically means they changed something very drastically from the original series.  This wasn’t a problem that happened a lot in the movie, but there is one major event that changes the course of Star Trek history.  It’s kind of hard to flip the switch in my brain and realize this is an alternate Star Trek universe.  As I said though, it does allow this franchise to re-write it’s own history and not have to be slave to the original series.  Of course, only those familiar with Star Trek will really know what I’m talking about anyway.  Feel free to ‘pants me’ after school for being too nerdly.