Review of Galaxy Quest (1999) by Joshua B — 24 May 2013

It is really a shame that Robert Gordon and David Howard, the writers of Galaxy Quest, went on to write almost nothing else, because this one film they worked together on is hilarious. A send-up, an homage, and a loving parody of Star Trek, Galaxy Quest is a comedy of errors that follows the cast of the titular sci-fi classic, whose television exploits are mistaken for documents of actual history by an alien race, who subsequently abducts the actors to help save their species.

The premise works great because it allows the film to alternately poke fun at "Trekkie" culture -- the film starts out with the cast on the convention circuit -- and the conventions of the genre itself, when the story shifts into a real-life rendition of one of the show's episodes.

The story is perfectly cast: Tim Allen as the show's Shatner-esque lead and ship captain, whose smarminess is at odds with his has-been status; Sigourney Weaver as the token female, who gets little to do and somehow ends up with her shirt off (JJ Abrams is still using that trope); and Alan Rickman as the would-be Shakespearean actor reduced to slumming it on TV with alien prosthetics on his face.

Surely Trek fans will get the most out of the film as its parallels and nods to Trek are plentiful and almost always hit the mark. This is a fun film, like Mystery Men, one of those late-90s genre pictures that turned the genre on its head in a way that became so popular a decade later.