Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Reviews

Star Trek has been considered a phenomenal zeitgeist series, producing a stream of hit-or-miss movies within a 50-year lifespan. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, on the other hand, is one of those misses, done by the warped mindset of Captain James T. Kirk himself, William Shatner. The movie involves the Starship Enterprise crew who deal with Sybok (Laurence Luckinbill), the Vulcan half-brother of Dr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), who hijacks the ship over a quest to find God at The Great Barrier. I don’t know about you, but the idea of God existing in space seems so beyond bizarre and far-fetched that you swear it reads like a ten-year-old would write on fanfiction.net, and somehow got millions of dollars to adapt to the big screen. In fact, I take that back, ten-year-olds watch sci-fi shows, so even they would have better knowledge of the franchise than the Star Trek veteran. Also, how many minor characters can you have in the first half of your movie and then completely abandon for the rest of it? It’s almost as if Shatner started with a decent scenario and jumped ship near the next scene and decided to focus on other characters and whisk away these superfluous individuals. Furthermore, the strangest, silliest, and most absurd running gag in the Star Trek series is the one where Spock fails to recognize the lyrics to “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” Talk about a childish moment in an equally shark-jumping plot, this joke came sporadically out of nowhere and led to a laughably lackluster payoff in the end. The Final Frontier, while not the worst of the Star Trek movies, meanders into weird territory and lacks the energy and emotional stakes of the rest of the series.

(2 Three-Breasted Cat Strippers out of 5)

I already saw this movie but since it was a while back and since I have it on DVD, I thought I might as well check it out again. Well, after 2 installments directed by Leonard Nimoy, it was apparently William Shatner's turn to direct a Star Trek flick. I had been actually warned by my fellow listal members that this installment was pretty bad and, indeed, it turned out to be the weakest Star Trek flick I have seen so far. I mean, it was not completely awful as it was pretty neat to see again all those familiar characters again and there were here and there a few good ideas but, a part from that, the whole thing was just pretty weak. Indeed, the pacing was quite terrible with some scenes which were stretched for much too long, the whole thing never looked so cheesy before and, above all, it was just rather boring to watch. I have to admit that I did enjoy the first minutes taking place in the desert but then, as soon as the plot really started, I pretty much lost interest right away. Anyway, to conclude, it does deserve its rather poor reputation, it is indeed pretty average and it is worth a look only if you are a die hard fan of Star Trek.