Galaxy Quest
DreamWorks, 1999
Directed by Dean Parisot

$$$

When a brilliant idea is well executed, it's a beautiful thing -- that's the case with the Sci-Fi comedy Galaxy Quest. The brilliant idea is this: the cast of an old Star Trek-type TV show is abducted by aliens who mistake their program for the real thing and who want them to help them save their galaxy.

Tim Allen stars as the show's egotistical Shatner-esque washed-up star. Sigourney Weaver, looking fantastic, plays a busty blonde cast member best known for her character's tight-fitting uniform (Weaver also gets to poke fun at her own Alien role). Alan Rickman follows up his turn in Dogma with another great comic performance as a serious actor, who can't escape the legacy of the silly Spock-type role he had on the show. The funny Daryl Mitchell and Tony Shalhoub round out the crew. As the movie opens, the gang are spending their days going from one fan convention to another -- trapped in type-casting hell, forced to spout their character's catch phrases over and over for audiences who can't get enough. That's when a band of real aliens drops by to enlist the actors help. At first, they're indistinguishable from the other crazed fans in costume at the convention. That is until they use interstellar transport pods to shoot the actors into space.

The aliens have built their own exact replica of the starship from the TV show (they've apparently intercepted the TV signals and mistaken them for "historical documents") and they expect the actors to know how to fly it. Suddenly the cast is forced to live out the roles they've been playing all these years and help the aliens defeat the evil, lizard-looking Sarris.

The adventure that follows is a real kick that manages to simultaneously make fun of Star Trek while emulating -- and in some cases improving upon -- its best elements. It's a sign of how bad-off the Star Trek franchise is that a movie that parodies the series manages to have better special effects, better action, a more coherent story and a more clever script than the last three Trek films combined. Stan Winston's creature creations here are especially impressive and David Newman's theme music beats the hell out of the un-hummable fanfares written for Deep Space Nine or Voyager.

Some of the punchlines fall flat, but comedically, there are far more hits than misses. The screenwriters manage to exploit their brilliant concept to its fullest. Beam yourself out to see it. (c) Copyright 1999