|
|
A 'Star Trek' Spoof That's on the Beam |
AS DRENCHED in gory murders and bloodletting as it may have been, Wes Craven's Scream made a footnote in movie history back in 1996 for being the first slasher-genre movie to first discuss the cliches and stereotyped characters of the formula, then use those elements as part of its unfolding plot. Now Dreamworks' Galaxy Quest might be destined to make similar history as the first sci-fi comedy to spoof our generic space adventure TV series, making light of their story cliches and human/alien beings.
Galaxy Quest is an obvious take-off on Star Trek and all of its subsequent sequels and clones, from Star Trek--The Next Generation to Star Trek: Voyager to Babylon 5. It takes a handful of down-and-out Hollywood types, who once play-acted as space heroes, and throws them into a "real" situation with aliens in the deep space of the Klatu Nebula. But in no way is this a condescending or cynical putdown of these shows or of the devoted fandom world that fervently lives and breathes them.
Indeed, scriptwriters Robert Gordon and David Howard (no doubt knowledgeable and devoted fans themselves of this kind of material) have concocted a light-hearted sendup featuring an assortment of goofball characters you eventually grow to like, no matter how falling down silly they at first seem. What ultimately emerges, given the way director Dean Parisot (Home Fries) allows the film to have an inspirational feel-good ending, is a heartfelt homage to the memory of Gene Roddenberry and his starship crews that have been traveling our TV and theatrical-release spaceways since 1966.
The title Galaxy Quest refers to a once-popular TV series that featured a stalwart starship crew commanding the NSEA Protector. Since leaving the air 18 years ago, however, the show's cast has found little work elsewhere and is relegated to attending fandom conventions in their old costumes, to sign autographs by rote and smile at geeky fans who recite lines of dialogue and have a quasi-religious attitude toward the now-in-mothballs characters.
The film opens at one of these fan conventions, allowing us a glimpse into the attitudes and relationships of the TV cast: Tim Allen plays actor Jason Nesmith, who starred as heroic Captain Peter Quincy Taggart. Eighteen years later he's still egotistically playing the star, still spouting the old popular dialogue, "Never give up, never surrender." All to the disdain of his frustrated co-workers. With Allen's performance one cannot help but be reminded of William (Captain James T. Kirk) Shatner's haughty attitude back in the days when Star Trek had been long gone from TV but hadn't quite returned as a franchise Paramount film series. (Who will ever forget the night on Saturday Night Live when Shatner told some Star Trek fans "to get a life.")
Resentful and cynical of his role as the alien humanoid Dr. Lazarus (from the planet Tev'Meck) is Shakespearean actor Alexander Dane, a part played to perfection by Alan Rickman. (Rickman creates a character perhaps inspired by Patrick Stewart, the Shakespearean actor who now stars in the Star Trek motion pictures as Captain Jean-Luc Picard. And of course there is homage in Rickman's make-up and attitude to Leonard Nimoy's Mr. Spock as well, since there was a time when Nimoy strove to reclaim his own true identity when he feared Spock was destroying it.)
The visual surprise of Galaxy Quest is Sigourney Weaver's portrayal of blond-haired actress Gwen DeMarco, a Hollywood sexpot who plays the starship's ditzy communications specialist, Lt. Tawny Madison. If she took this role to escape the image of stern-minded Ripley in the Alien movies, Weaver has succeeded by exposing to us a new satirical side, as well as an abundance of cleavage.
Others in this ensemble of TV actors: Tony Shalhoub is Fred Kwan, who plays Tech. Sgt. Chen; Daryl Mitchell is Tommy Webber, who plays helmsman Lt. Laredo, and Sam Rockwell is Nameless Crewman #6 who got killed off in his one and only episode and now fears he's going to die in every new dangerous situation.
In making sport of Star Trek and its lore, Galaxy Quest becomes especially inventive in having the cast of the series actually involved with a race of alien beings called Thermians. Although these are bug-eyed octopus creatures, they assume human guise, looking and dressing for all purposes like the geeks at the Galaxy Quest conventions. Their leader is Mathesar (Enrico Colantoni), who believes that the TV shows were really "historical documents" and hence thinks that the actors are spacemen who can help defeat a race of evil lizard creatures plotting to wipe out the Thermians. The humanoid Thermians never quite get being human right, and add to the film's nuttiness. How did a race this dumb figure out a way to build space-traveling technology? You shouldn't ask.
The script's satire works best when the characters rely on the lore of past episodes to get out of cliffhanger situations, and Allen even turns to some loyal fans back on Earth who know more about the series than he does.
Among the film's best special effects shots (brought to fruition by George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic of San Rafael) are those of the humans being "beamed up" to a space station (although not in the way they used to do it on Star Trek), and one dazzling sequence in which Tim Allen is exposed to the wonders of the Universe for the very first time. Stan Winston also contributed to the effects, which include an imaginative rock creature formed by boulders, and a race of little cutesy-pie aliens - cutesy, that is, until they bare their sharpened teeth and swoop to the attack.
How Allen and his crew help the Thermians defeat a race of lizard monsters is more fanciful fantasy than science-fiction, and things get a little corny when the crew members begin to believe their TV characters and the values their series once stood for, turning into their heroic TV counterparts.
But, hey. There's a lot of fun to be found in Galaxy Quest, which is more than I can say for the last couple of Star Trek movies that I was forced to sit through.
© 2000 by John Stanley
| Home | About Us | Archives | Talkback | Shopping Mall |