Tagline: The show has been cancelled...but the adventure is just beginning.
Curiosity: It’s like Star Trek but with Tim Allen!
Plot: While they were once respected actors, the cast of the beloved sci-fi show Galaxy Quest now eke out a living appearing at conventions. Star Jason Nesmith (Home Improvement’s legendary Tim Allen) eats up the idol worship, but the rest of the cast can’t stand him or the fans. Their fortunes change, however, when a group of real aliens, led by Mathesar (Enrico Colantoni), arrive. Thinking that the characters they played on Galaxy Quest were real, the aliens beg the cast for help in fighting off their enemies. Hi-larious space-related hijinks ensue.
Thoughts: Hot dang I like Galaxy Quest, even though the show is perhaps too dependent on Star Trek for relevance. Still, it’s a really funny sci-fi spoof, thanks in great deal to the cast. Allen is pretty much Allen, although he throws in a little bit of William Shatner from time to time. Sigourney Weaver spoofs her fame as Ripley by playing a sexpot. Alan Rickman essentially plays himself as a failed actor, imbuing lines with much more weight and emotional depth. The two standouts are in the margins, though.
Sam Rockwell plays Guy, an actor who appeared on the show once as a “red shirt,” a character who dies early on to establish that the plot is serious. He spends the movie anxiously waiting for real life death to come, and Rockwell often channels Bill Paxton circa Aliens to great comedic effect. Tony Shalhoub’s character was the chief technician on the show, but since he doesn’t actually know anything about spaceships, he ends up being a sort of inverse Scotty: Mellow and not terribly useful. He undercuts a lot of the drama in a pretty funny way, which is even more credible since the character really isn’t all that defined in the script. Per the DVD’s featurettes, Shalhoub pretty built the character from scratch.
But while Galaxy Quest functions well as a comedy, it’s also a legitimate science fiction film, filled with explosions, space travel, and aliens. To that extent, viewers’ familiarity with Star Trek needn’t be that great; the film overall holds up well. But Trekkers/Trekkies will definitely appreciate the humor more.
Reflection: Look, it’s Rainn Wilson before The Office both made and ruined his career!
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