Galaxy Quest (1999)
Review by Catalyst

Directed by Dean Parisot
Written by David Howard (screenplay, story) and Robert Gordon (screenplay)
Starring Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shaloub, Sam Rockwell

My Advice: Matinee

Jason Nesmith (Allen), Gwen DeMarco (Weaver), and Alexander Dane (Rickman) once had a TV series. That was almost twenty years ago, and an entire fan culture has sprung up around the series. There are huge conventions where people come dressed as their favorite characters and discuss the schematics of the ship. Sound familiar? If you're thinking Star Trek, you're mostly right, but not entirely. Fortunately, that was one of the first things they got right in making this film: satiring a genre (as did Blazing Saddles, for example) is funny, satirizing a single topic (the last several Leslie Nielsen outings) is a breeding ground for the lame.

Meanwhile, the Thermian race has montiored the transmissions of the Galaxy Quest series from outer space...and they think it's real. What's more, they come to Earth and ask the "crew" for aid. The crew, thinking the Thermians to be yet another in the long series of fans who take it too seriously wanting to film themselves with the crew, go along because this is what they do to support those nasty food habits they've developed.

What they find is a real crisis, of course, and the actors have to become their characters and save the day.

Not an original story, no. Not a particularly epic story, no. But in the hands of a very talented crew, a very funny and highly entertaining story. Tim Allen is not quite Shatner, probably because there are enough of us who take malicious joy in watching Star Trek: Generations for no other reason than we can scream "Bridge to Captain Kirk!!!!!" and...well, you know what happens next. Sigourney Weaver plays a woman who is stuck playing the cleavage that talks to the computer, and SDI Favorite Alan Rickman is the Shakespearean Thespian who is mortified that he is best known for really bad alien dialogue. Sam Rockman pulls his weight as Guy, an actor who basically slipped in the backdoor of this mission because he played the expendable crew-member in episode 81. He adds a lot of flavor when he realizes that he's the expendable crew member here, too.

This movie got a number of things right: first, enough of a plot to carry the movie when it's not funny, but not so much that the unavoidable gaping holes in the plot are worth worrying about. Next, there's enough character development to make you feel for these people and enjoy it when they're winning. But most importantly, it avoided doing what so many of the satires before it got wrong. (MEL!!! When you remove satire, there's a plot left behind, otherwise you've got a two hour skit from Saturday Night Live, remember?! LESLIE!!! See, it's okay to act in these things.)

Fun for the whole family--assuming you don't mind your kids seeing more of Sigourney Weaver's cleavage than we previously believed she had in her possession, of course. It doesn't get that final cup because, let's face it, this is fun and thrilling fluff.