The original Star Trek series was cheese-laden fluff. Enjoyable, but a bit rubbish. I can remember sitting in the lounge with my grandmother in the mid-80s, watching William Shatner ("Ooh, he's a nice man" in my grandmother's opinion) hamming it up opposite Leonard Nimoy ("I don't like him"). I never really got into the whole Trek thing much beyond that though. Clearly, JJ Abrams did. He's grabbed the original premise, scraped off a decent sized chunk of gorgonzola, polished it up and added lots of whizzy effects. And he's made a decent fist of it.
The casting is very good; in particular, Zachary Quinto's is excellent as Spock. The effects expected in a summer action blockbuster are all present and correct - and as far as I can tell, there are quite a few nods to the original.
So, another Hollywood franchise reboot then. Pretty much, but this one works well - it manages to simultaneously shake off most of the cheese that has been piled onto the series since it started and still remain faithful to Trek's roots. As an introduction to a shiny new franchise, it works well. Would my grandmother like it though? I doubt it; apart from the introduction of some 'modern' language, it also features Leonard Nimoy and not William Shatner which would probably be enough to make her switch it off and do some hoovering instead.
My rating: 8.0 / 10
IMDB rating: 8.4 / 10
Running time: 127 mins
IMDB link
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