Galaxy Quest (1999)

almost a perfect 10
This, pretty much, is our of my favorite movies. Great for most of the family, but I still don't recommend for small kids. Excellent story line, with a super blend of characters. What would make this a perfect 10? It should have a release for wide screen in 16x9, as there's not much worse than to having a $$$ wide screen plasma and being forced to see black bars top and bottom. Should be released in a 1.8 aspect ratio. Other than that, a very good movie.

Galaxy Quest
Moviegoers who liked EVOLUTION, MEN IN BLACK, SPACEBALLS, MARS ATTACKS!, MYSTERY MEN or THE FIFTH ELEMENT will find something to love in GALAXY QUEST, one of my favorite films of the past fifty years.

By now we all know the story, so it's hard to recall how difficult it was for most ordinary moviegoers to get their heads around the concept back in the year 2000: "They're actors in an old-time, cancelled TV sci-fi show and they get W-H-A-T?" People were walking out of the theater in droves the way that they used to walk out of Antonioni's L'AVVENTURA, unable to take in the slightest detail due to a mental fog having set into their brains. You know what numbskulls the US public are, and how nobody ever went broke underestimating them. Well, writer Dean Parisot somehow made us sit up and pay attention and for once a "high concept" approach to metafiction paid off in a big way. Part of it was his concern for establishing the characters, the actors whom we come to love despite their general egotism (Tim Allen), narrow view of life (Sigourney Weaver), distaste for all things American (Alan Rickman), etc. On top of that, like a celluloid gel, was added our memories of STAR TREK and other cult shows, and on top of that, our generalized knowledge of fan bases--for even if we're not uberfans ourselves, we like to poke fun at those who are. However in this case, the fans themselves become heroic in a genuinely surprising and resonant way, led by the redoubtable Justin Long (so funny when his mother pressures him to take out the trash, while he's in the middle of saving an entire universe from slavery and collapse).

The actors are all uniformly good, except that this time around I was sort of "not so great" about Sam Rockwell, who seemed to be hamming it up for no reason, though his part (as a bit player on the original show, "Crewman #2) was perhaps more shallowly executed than the others and he might have felt he had to make up for it by a trunkload of smirks and gapes. Oh well, what would there be left to criticize if everything was perfect and everyone else practically was! Poor Tim Allen, imagine knowing that you had once appeared in a great movie like GALAXY QUEST and now you're making WILD HOGS, though I'm sure he's crying all the way to the bank.

And I didn't recognize Keith Mars until that spaceman makeup until the very last reel!

Not my thing, but still actually decent
I am an Alan Rickman lover, and I do not watch Tim Allen anything. So Alan won over and I watched this film. It was kind of annoying at first, and well, any time Allen was on camera, but as soon as Sigourney Weaver and Mr. Rickman joined in, it was kinda fun. Sam rockwell had a great small part too. This is basically a spoof of Star Trek and science fiction films, which normally wouldn't interest me, but I must say, it definitley had its moments.