Review – Star Trek: The Motion Picture

This movie bets heavily on the proposition that its audience is composed largely of Trek fans who’ve been pining for new entries in the saga since the series was cancelled more than a decade earlier. As such, it’s reasonably successful. It features the original cast playing familiar characters with their well-established strengths and weaknesses. It has long, loving shots of the new-yet-familiar Enterprise. It even sports a plot that seems eerily familiar. However, for anyone who isn’t jonesing for fresh Trek (and in the age of full series DVDs, why would anyone be desperate for a fix?) this picture wastes a lot of time on empty nostalgia. It also relies heavily on long effects shots, stuff that might have been impressive back in the days of models and mattes but now just serves to grind the story to a screeching halt. Fortunately after they got some of this out of their system they came back and made a better sequel. Mildly amusing