Star Trek

Yesterday I took one of my daughters on a date… we saw the new Star Trek.

Wow! What a great film.

At first, I was a little hesitant to bring any of my kids to it because of the preview. The preview shows a girl undressing, some pretty passionate kissing… it hinted that the film had some pretty sensual moments. I asked others who had seen the film and the consensus was, “What you saw in the preview is about all there was in the entire film.”

They were right. In one scene Kirk is making out with a girl (who happens to be all green) who is wearing a bikini type outfit, apparently her alien underwear. While making out, her room-mate comes home. Kirk hides under the bed and the room-mate starts to strip down to underwear (the exact scene you see in the preview). That was the end of it.

I’ll be honest. I’ve seen much worse on TV.

I watched the film with my 11-year-old and had no regrets. We looked at each other during the underwear scene and sighed (we have had the talk before about how Hollywood somehow finds the need to want to include that stuff to sell tickets. No words were necessary. My daughter knew). The film was really fun overall.

I’m not a Trekkie by any means. I watched the TV show when I was a kid (my favorite episode was the one where Kirk got stranded on the planet with the lizard creature. See! A Trekkie would probably know that creature’s name!), and I watched all the films when they came out. The first film stunk (soooooo boring), Wrath of Khan was cool, then they all sort of blended together (although I kind of remember liking the one with the whales- which one was that? Four?). I never tried the new series, although my brother was a big fan of the Next Generation. I heard it was really good- maybe I’ll have to check it out.

This movie made me curious to go back and see some of the original TV show. It was so fun to see the young versions of each character: Bones, Sulu, Chekov, Scotty, etc.

And let me just say, JJ Abrams (the director) is just brilliant. The film started with such realistic action and strong performances. Watching this now, it would be truly difficult even for Star Wars fans to go back and watch Mark Hamill say lines like, “But I was going to the Tashi station to pick up some power converters!”

Plus.. the cast was amazing: Zachary Quinto (Cyler from Heroes), Leonard Nimoy, Eric Bana (under a bunch of makeup), Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz and Shawn of the Dead), Tyler Perry… and more. Wow.

Star Trek rocked.

Todd’s official revue of the film here.