[Movie 139 / Day 148]
The original Star Trek series was cheese-laden fluff. Enjoyable, but a bit rubbish. I can remember sitting in the lounge with my grandmother in the mid-80s, watching William Shatner (“Ooh, he’s a nice man” in my grandmother’s opinion) hamming it up opposite Leonard Nimoy (“I don’t like him”). I never really got into the whole Trek thing much beyond that though. Clearly, JJ Abrams did. He’s grabbed the original premise, scraped off a decent sized chunk of gorgonzola, polished it up and added lots of whizzy effects. And he’s made a decent fist of it.
The casting is very good; in particular, Zachary Quinto is excellent as Spock. The effects expected in a summer action blockbuster are all present and correct – and as far as I can tell, there are quite a few nods to the original.
So, another Hollywood franchise reboot then. Pretty much, but this one works well – it manages to simultaneously shake off most of the cheese that has been piled onto the series since it started and still remain faithful to Trek’s roots. As an introduction to a shiny new franchise, it works well. Would my grandmother like it though? I doubt it; apart from the introduction of some ‘modern’ language, it also features a cameo by Leonard Nimoy and not a ‘camp-eo’ by William Shatner which would probably be enough to make her switch it off and do some hoovering instead.
Rating: 
[ IMDB rating: 8.4 / 10 | IMDB link | Running time: 127 mins