Sci-fi....Comedy!

When I was a kid (I was about 10 when this came out; I think I was in middle school), I watched this movie *a lot*. I never thought that it was great, or the best movie ever made, but...something just made me keep coming back to it. It just seemed sorta natural to watch it every time it came on TV. I also saw it in theatres...even in school. I must have watched it at least a dozen times, if not more.

And I finally figured out why: it's unique. It's a sci-fi...comedy! That's right, in a genre entranced by drama, often quite overblown drama, this one is *funny*. And in a genre full of people quite taken with the genre, this movie makes fun of itself...and, in a way, the audience! And in a little subculture of reality, a little world unto itself, quite taken with the institution of the franchise, and, in a way, almost born to nurture franchises...this movie is, yeah, very light and flip about franchises and their tropes.

And, yeah, like I said, it's basically an average movie in a lot of ways...but it is, though this sound odd, a unique average movie. And maybe that's what sci-fi should aspire to, in a way....the characters, the plot, and so on, are quite serviceable and sturdy, in a way, without being shockingly innovative, but the concept of the movie itself was a bit of an innovation, at least for this genre...

Know what I mean?

And: again, I don't know if the cast was really better or worse than the casts in a dozen or a million other real-world, general, sort of comedies and genres, I mean, *dramas*, but...one choice was interesting. Tony Shalhoub, ("Monk"), plays a supporting role--he's definitely not a lead, but, if you think about it...it is an interesting choice.

And, basically, I think, yeah, it's just a solid, competent movie that maybe you don't need to be a fanboy to watch and like...and, yeah, *not* live your life around.

So: when you're deep in the claws of despair, wondering if sci-fi (as good a name as any, though I don't like to write it out, since I've never seen the "science" in it) will ever claw it's way out of the pits of self-defeating nonsense it compulsively throws itself into: take heart!

"Never give up...never surrender!"

After all, the guys on the Starship Galaxy Quest, or whatever, were just as clueless as you, but, somehow, they managed to pull their ass out of the fire.

Yeah, they really did a decent job of it.

(8/10)